Last weekend’s Caribbean live-fire exercise in and around the suburbs of Caracas delivered a steady stream of tactical messages to the Western Hemisphere. We don’t like narco-terrorists, wannabe communists, bloated dictators, or people who supply oil to our adversaries.

But that wasn’t the real message.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t ‘Sleepy Joe.’ And his call sign is FAFO.

The love note was addressed to China, and it read: We are awake now. Our game is FAFO.

America’s 36-year slumber on the Monroe Doctrine — “Stay out of the Western Hemisphere or else” — began after Panama in 1990. The Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism followed, and Washington became dangerously myopic about threats in America’s own backyard.

Then came the turning point. When Bill Clinton signed off on communist China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2000, Beijing rapidly surged into a world-class economic power. Along with that rise came a succession of Chinese leaders who openly advanced the idea of global Chinese hegemony.

Oddly enough, many of those ideas came from an American — my late friend Alvin Toffler.

Toffler’s book “The Third Wave” so impressed Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang in 1984 that millions of bootleg Chinese translations were distributed — without royalties — throughout the People’s Liberation Army. The same thing happened after Toffler published “War and Anti-War.” Once again, millions of pirated copies circulated, and Beijing began integrating his ideas into military doctrine.

In the late 1990s, PLA Major General Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote “Unrestricted Warfare,” borrowing heavily from Toffler while laying out a strategy to defeat the United States.

In hindsight, it should have been titled “Slow Motion War.”

The book focuses on perceived weaknesses in American character and American war-making. The United States remains a nation of quarterly earnings reports and election cycles. We change political leadership every two or four years. The Chinese think in generational time frames.

From their perspective, Americans only go to war when facing a “clear and present danger.”

The genius of “Unrestricted Warfare” lies in exploiting what happens when a threat is clear but not present — like cancer from long-term smoking — or present but not clear, like the slow poisons Lucrezia Borgia allegedly used on her enemies.

Qiao and Wang proposed a slow, steady pressure campaign against the four pillars of American national power: diplomatic, information, military, and economic — the DIME.

Examples abound. Diplomatic and economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative. Tight control of information inside China paired with aggressive information warfare abroad through platforms such as TikTok. A decades-long military buildup aimed at surpassing U.S. power. And a long trail of currency manipulation.

(And then there’s this gem from page 191 of “Unrestricted Warfare”: “Can special funds be set up to exert greater influence on another country’s government and legislature through lobbying?” Eric Swalwell might find that line interesting.)

RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

While America fixated on the Middle East, China quietly embedded itself throughout Latin America. In Panama, Beijing gained control of port management at both ends of the Panama Canal and began upgrading the system. In Costa Rica — which has no army — China donated 3,500 police cars and built a national stadium in San José, free of charge. It also cut sweetheart deals involving hundreds of Chinese fishing trawlers. Colombia saw similar treatment.

Then came Orange Man Bad.

Donald Trump is the first president to grasp that China isn’t a Red Godzilla stomping cities with napalm breath and a scything tail. China is more like the Blob — and Trump is Steve McQueen.

Venezuela, Maduro, oil, and narco-terrorism were all subsets.

China was the target. Xi Jinping was the bullseye.

Zero hour wasn’t set by the weather. It was set by the departure of Chinese envoy Qiu Xiaoqi, who had just wrapped up discussions on future ties with Venezuela. Unfortunately for Beijing, Delta Force snagged and bagged Nicolás Maduro and his wife and had them sitting in a Brooklyn jail before the envoy even made it home.

Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t “Sleepy Joe.” And his call sign is FAFO.

Any questions?

​Usa, Venezuela, China, Oil, Drug trafficking, Monroe doctrine, Opinion & analysis, Dime, Diplomacy, Information warfare, Military, Economy, Trade, Donald trump, Nicolas maduro, Xi jinping, Unrestricted warfare, Belt and road initiative (bri), Tiktok, Qiao liang, Wang xiangsui, Alvin toffler, Donroe doctrine 

For years, Dave Chappelle has been treated as a kind of honorary dissident on the right. Not because he ever pledged allegiance, but because he irritated the correct people. He mocked pronouns, needled sanctimony, and refused to bow. That was enough. In a culture addicted to easy binaries, irritation became endorsement. Chappelle was recast as the anti-woke jester, the last free man in a room full of rules.

“The Unstoppable…” puts an end to that fantasy.

The right’s long flirtation with Chappelle rested on a misunderstanding. He was never an ally. He was a contrarian whose targets briefly overlapped with conservative concerns.

As the Netflix special begins, Chappelle emerges on stage wearing a jacket emblazoned with Colin Kaepernick’s name across the back, a symbol doing more work than most monologues. It is declarative. Kaepernick, a distinctly mediocre quarterback who parlayed a declining football career into a lucrative role as a full-time political brand, has long functioned more as an abstraction than as an athlete. His protest became performative, his grievance a commodity, his kneel a credential. Before a word is spoken, the audience is told where power, sympathy, and grievance will be placed. Identity is not the backdrop. Quite the opposite. It’s the billboard.

Black and white

From there, the special settles into a familiar groove. Race becomes the organizing principle, the master key, the lens through which every topic is filtered and fixed. America is again framed as a racist hellscape, a uniquely cruel experiment, a place where whiteness looms as a near-mythical menace.

This is not observation so much as obsession. The fixation risks alienating white viewers almost immediately. Some in the audience likely sense it. Others — liberal self-flagellators by instinct — laugh along anyway, even as they become the punch line of nearly every joke.

Chappelle takes aim at Elon Musk, at Trump, at the culture of DOGE-era absurdity, but the jokes rarely travel. They circle. Musk becomes less a human eccentric and more a symbol of tech-bro whiteness run amok. Trump is reduced to a prop, wheeled on whenever the set needs a familiar villain. That might be forgivable — useful, even — if the material pushed somewhere unexpected. It doesn’t. For a comedian of Chappelle’s ability, too much of the set feels curiously unambitious.

Left hook

The most telling moment comes in Chappelle’s account of Jack Johnson. Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, endured explicit racism. That history is real. That is not in dispute. What is striking is how Chappelle treats that history. Johnson becomes less a man of his time and more a stand-in for black people in the present, besieged by the same “demonic white man.”

And so Chappelle conflates Johnson’s struggles with with the lives of rappers T.I. and the late Nipsey Hussle — and celebrates all three heroes for opposing white America.

As BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock recently posted on X:

This comedy special exposes [Chappelle] as highly controlled opposition, the ultimate plant, a fraud. He pretends to be a fearless speaker of truth to power. It’s laughable. No one with a brain can witness the Charlie Kirk assassination and then argue/suggest that Nipsey Hussle, T.I., and Jack Johnson were/are the real rebels, the real threats to American hegemony. Dave quoted Jack Johnson as saying his life was dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He was a boxer with the worldview of a modern gangsta rapper.

Some kings?

And then comes Chappelle’s praise of Saudi Arabia.

Not cautiously. Not ironically. He recounts performing at a comedy festival in Riyadh, openly boasting about the size of the paycheck. He describes feeling freer speaking there than in the United States. Freer. In a society where speech is monitored, dissent is criminalized, and punishment still includes public canings and amputations.

The audience laughs on schedule, applauding with the enthusiasm of trained sea lions. I found myself wondering why.

There is something almost surreal about hearing a man who has spent years describing America as uniquely oppressive extol the virtues of a monarchy where speech is tolerated only when it is toothless. The contradiction is never addressed. It simply floats past, buoyed by bravado and bank balance.

This isn’t hypocrisy in the cheap sense. It is something more revealing — and easier to miss because Chappelle is such a gifted orator. His moral compass isn’t anchored to freedom, but to grievance. America is condemned because it fails to live up to an ideal. Saudi Arabia is praised because it pays well and demands little beyond discretion.

It would be easier if “The Unstoppable…” were simply bad. It is not. Chappelle remains a master of timing. His cadence still carries. The problem is less talent than trajectory.

RELATED: Dave Chappelle faces fierce backlash over criticism of US while performing in Saudi Arabia

Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

Punching inward

What once felt dangerous now feels dutiful. What once cut across power now reinforces a different orthodoxy. Chappelle no longer punches up or down so much as inward, tightening his world until everything is interpreted through race alone.

The right’s long flirtation with Chappelle rested on a misunderstanding. He was never an ally. He was a contrarian whose targets briefly overlapped with conservative concerns. When he mocked trans men in women’s sports, it landed during a moment of peak absurdity, when the subject was everywhere and ripe for satire. It was easy. It was funny. But it was never a statement of allegiance.

“The Unstoppable…” makes that clear. The jacket, the Johnson parable, the Saudi sermon, the relentless racial framing — all of it points in the same direction.

Comedy, at its best, unsettles everyone. It exposes what our certainties conceal. In this special, Chappelle appears more interested in confirming his own.

Unstoppable, perhaps. But no longer subversive.

​Entertainment, Culture, Dave chappelle, Comedy, Netflix, Saudi arabia, Jack johnson, Nipsey hussle, T.i., Racism, Review 

An Ohio woman agreed to testify against her husband after they were arrested for creating and disseminating child sex abuse material as well as bestiality.

Prosecutors said the material was found after a search warrant was performed at Shawna Mayfield’s home in Warren based on a tip from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a 30-year sentence in the plea deal in return for her cooperation.

Warren police said they found evidence that Mayfield had produced, created, and spread the child sex abuse material. She was arrested in August.

Two children allegedly told investigators that they were compelled to engage in sex acts by the woman.

“Additionally, the state found videos of the defendant performing sex acts with an animal, specifically a dog, and again,” prosecutor Gabe Wildman said, “while executing the search warrant in the final count, this defendant and her co-defendant had a marijuana grow on the premises that exceeded the statutory limits.”

Mayfield pleaded guilty to five counts of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor, eight counts of rape, one count of sexual conduct with an animal, and endangering children.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a 30-year sentence in the plea deal in return for her cooperation and agreement to testify against her 37-year-old husband, Justin Mayfield.

Her husband was charged with multiple counts of rape, one count of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, and one count of endangering children.

Prosecutors have offered him a plea deal that would put him in prison for 50 years to life. His attorney asked for less time in prison after noting that his wife had more charges against her but with a lower sentence.

RELATED: 21-year-old Texas man who allegedly sold child sex and bestiality videos turned in by relative

Justin Mayfield’s trial will begin later in January, and Shawna Mayfield will be officially sentenced later as well.

The man’s Facebook page listed him as a “digital creator,” according to WKRC-TV.

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​Shawna mayfield abuse, Bestiality guilty, Justin mayfield abuse, Child sex abuse material, Crime 

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) recently sent me a seven-page memo outlining the House Freedom Caucus’ priorities for 2026. It is outstanding.

Nothing in it calls for knock-down, drag-out ideological fights. These are 60%-70% issues with the American public, not just conservatives: secure the border, secure elections, expand health care freedom, cut government waste, and eliminate fraudulent programs.

We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word. But so is fear.

Depending on what happens with the economy over the next six or seven months, this agenda may represent the GOP’s last realistic chance to hold the House and avoid what betting markets currently put at a 53% likelihood: President Trump facing yet another impeachment next year.

And it will not stop with him.

Democrats will come after War Secretary Pete Hegseth for killing “innocent” drug traffickers. They will target Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for disrupting the childhood vaccine schedule. They will pursue Secretary of State Marco Rubio for alleged “war crimes” in Venezuela.

They will do all of this for one reason: In the end, they are coming after you.

The House alone cannot stop that onslaught. As sensible and popular as the Freedom Caucus’ agenda is — and as eager as Trump would be to sign it — the Senate must also act. And I see no path to real victory unless the Republican Senate finds the clarity and courage to nuke the filibuster.

The alternative is grim. If Republicans refuse to act, Democrats will almost certainly scrap the filibuster themselves within a year to impose their agenda. If that happens, I am not sure the Republican Party — or the country — recovers.

Our side already suffers from a deep demoralization problem. What do you think happens to morale when voters watch their leaders voluntarily surrender leverage to the enemy during what increasingly resembles a cold civil war? The black pill will become a black hole of civic abandonment.

Or we could try something radical: empower a Republican Congress to deliver tangible results — $1.90 gas as we are currently enjoying, lower inflation, and health care costs driven back toward pre-COVID levels. Then watch as figures like Candace Owens and the Groyper gang lose their ability to manipulate a depressed and disoriented base with conspiratorial nonsense about the Jooooooooos.

Money in people’s pockets or more gaslighting?

That should be one of the easiest political choices the GOP has ever faced — especially in an environment where turnout collapses when Trump is not on the ballot. Republicans either go big by eliminating the filibuster, or they go home. And if they fail, some of us may end up facing prosecution while the likes of Tim Walz skate free.

RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The year 2025 was about pushing back the darkness inflicted by the Biden administration. The year 2026 must be about what we unapologetically replace that worldview with. Standing in the way is the filibuster.

So what are we prepared to do?

No matter how dire things feel, I have seen proof that action still matters. Children’s Health Defense recently exposed a quiet attempt to shield pesticide companies from liability. Within days, that language was pulled from the bill in question.

I also watched Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) abruptly abandon his re-election bid after a single determined individual exposed the massive Somali fraud scandal bleeding taxpayers dry to benefit people who openly despise this country.

That tells me something important.

We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word.

But so is fear.

And 2026 will force us to choose between them.

​House gop, Chip roy, Mike johnson, Filibuster, Impeachment, House democrats, Pete hegseth, House of representatives, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Republicans, Marco rubio, Robert f. kennedy jr. 

The U.S. military deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, bringing him to New York City to face drug, narco-terrorism, and weapons charges.

Days later, President Donald Trump — who last month ordered a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela and has been in talks with the vestigial Maduro regime about opening up to American oil companies — announced that “Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America” to be sold at market price for the supposed benefit of the American and Venezuelan people.

‘After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.’

The geopolitical implications of America’s removal of Maduro and Washington’s increasing oversight of Venezuela’s oil sector are far-reaching.

In addition to demonstrating the reluctance of certain American adversaries to support one another with anything beyond strongly worded statements, Trump’s reassertion of U.S. influence over Venezuelan energy and his removal of the leftist dictator serve to undermine the communist regimes in China and Cuba as well as to threaten Russia’s ability to finance military aggression in the medium to long term.

“The recent actions taken by the U.S. in Caracas were motivated by a desire to show greater assertiveness by the U.S. against China and Russia’s efforts in Latin America,” David Detomasi, a professor of international business at Queen’s University who has written extensively on the geopolitics of oil, suggested to Blaze News.

“Because much of Venezuela’s oil exports ended up in Chinese and/or Russian hands, gaining control over those exports was an important goal,” Detomasi added.

The Trump administration indicated in its National Security Strategy that “after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”

RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again

Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images

To this end, the administration indicated it would “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels as of 2024.

Despite this natural abundance, output has been nowhere close to what it could be, owing to the nationalization of oil assets under Hugo Chávez in the mid 2000s and other ruinous leftist policies that have since starved the industry of investment, expertise, and infrastructural support. Since the 1970s, when the country was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, daily output has dropped to 1.1 million barrels.

While output has dropped from 7% to 1% of global oil production since the 1970s, Venezuelan oil exports have nevertheless proven valuable for nations antipathetic to the United States, China and Cuba in particular.

China

The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the recent American actions in Venezuela, stating that “such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region.”

China, here throwing rocks from a glass house, announced in 2023 the elevation of the China-Venezuela relationship to an “all-weather strategic partnership” and indicated Beijing would back Venezuela’s “just cause against external interference.”

In addition to having its “all-weather” partnership exposed as an undefended fair-weather compact and losing a key ally in Caracas, China now faces the possibility of losing a significant source of energy.

Chinese imports of Venezuelan oil reportedly hit 470,000 barrels per day last year, accounting for around 4.5% of China’s maritime crude imports. In November, Venezuela reportedly sent as many as 746,000 barrels per day to China.

Reuters indicated that a portion of these imports goes to paying down Venezuela’s debt to China, believed to be in excess of $10 billion.

J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, recently noted that “depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China’s present oil imports.”

RELATED: The Venezuela crisis was never just about drugs

Photo by Manaure Quintero / AFP via Getty Images

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist and the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told Blaze News that China wants to buy all the oil it can since it already has coal and doesn’t produce much oil or natural gas.

‘China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia.’

In addition to depriving China of a critical source of energy or at the very least regulating its flow, the economist suggested that the restoration of American influence over Venezuelan energy and the potential of Caracas ramping up oil production may also diminish a key source of China’s geopolitical power.

“If there’s more oil around, it might lose geopolitical power in terms of the demand for its wind turbines, its solar panels, and its electric batteries that go in the electric vehicles,” Furchtgott-Roth said.

As of 2024, China reportedly manufactured 92% of the world’s solar panels and 82% of wind turbines.

Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News that many of Maduro’s fellow travelers remain in power, so it is presently unclear whether Caracas will keep China cut off or resist its influence.

Martínez-Fernández suggested, however, that ultimately “extricating that Chinese influence and presence in our hemisphere” would amount to a massive victory, serving also to weaken BRICS and reveal how such anti-American alliances “collapse once they’re tested by the strength of the United States.”

“When it comes to it, China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia, even when they have substantial interests there,” Martínez-Fernández said.

Cuba

Whereas Maduro’s ouster and the premier exercise of the “Donroe Doctrine” spell trouble for Beijing, they could prove catastrophic for the regime in Cuba.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel suggested this week that “it is urgent that the international community mobilize, organize, and coordinate in denouncing this flagrant act of state terrorism and the illegal, immoral, and criminal kidnapping of a legitimate president.”

Díaz-Canel’s sense of urgency is understandable granted that Cuba — which has suffered rolling blackouts in recent months and years — relies on Venezuela for subsidized oil.

“If oil supply were to cease entirely, the Cuban economy would grind to a halt,” Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University, told NBC News. “This would represent a devastating blow to a Cuban economy already in recession for six years and lacking the productive capacity, competitiveness and foreign currency to replace these flows.”

Bert Hoffmann, a political scientist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told Euronews, “Over the last months, Venezuelan oil still made up 70% of Cuba’s total oil imports, with Mexico and Russia sharing the rest.”

‘Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.’

In addition to Cuba’s energy dependence on Venezuela, Díaz-Canel’s regime was closely linked with Maduro’s, with Cuban intelligence and security services lending a hand in Caracas.

When asked about whether the U.S. should give other countries in the region the Venezuela treatment, Martínez-Fernández said, “By doing what we did in Venezuela, we are helping to cut off lifelines to the more dramatic and dangerous threats beyond Venezuela in our hemisphere.”

Weeks ahead of Maduro’s capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that bringing down Cuba’s communist government is the policy of the United States.

“I think every administration would love to see a different type of situation in Cuba. Cuba is a disaster. It’s a disaster. It’s not just because they’re Marxists and because they’re terrorists,” Rubio said. “They’re incompetent. These are incompetent people, and they’ve destroyed that country.”

Trump told reporters on Sunday, “Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now they won’t have that money coming in.”

“Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” Trump said. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out.”

Russia

Russia’s foreign ministry characterized the recent American actions in Caracas as “destructive foreign interference” and urged the Trump administration to “reconsider their position.”

While Russia, like China and Cuba, had a close strategic partnership with Maduro’s regime, it does not similarly rely on Venezuelan oil. Nevertheless, the crackdown in Caracas could nevertheless have profound consequences for Moscow.

RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard warns: Powerful foreign allies eager to pull US into war with Russia

Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP via Getty Images

Furchtgott-Roth recently wrote that “Russia, reliant on oil revenues to fund military operations, will suffer if expanded Venezuelan output pushes prices lower.”

Income from Russia’s oil and gas exports amounts to nearly one-third of the country’s federal revenues.

When asked about the timeline for such consequence, Furchtgott-Roth told Blaze News that the consequences could be felt in Moscow in the near future, even though it might take years for Venezuela to significantly increase oil production.

“Prices are set on the basis of expectations of future supply. So as soon as people see that the conditions are in place for Venezuelan oil to be produced in greater quantities, prices will adjust, presumably down lower than they would have been otherwise,” the economist said.

‘They might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.’

While Maduro’s ouster and the potential U.S.-led energy renaissance in Venezuela could profoundly impact Russia, Moscow’s response has been rather muted, amounting to little more than heated blather before the United Nations.

Neil Melvin, a political scientist at the Royal United Services Institute, told Deutsche Welle that “Russia’s support for Venezuela has been more symbolic than practical.”

Although Russia’s influence and relations in the Western Hemisphere have been impacted, Melvin suspects that Moscow does not want to offend Washington with heavy criticism at a time when the U.S. is working to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

The relative Russian silence on America’s shake-up in Latin America might also have something to do with its own geopolitical ambitions.

Professor Detomasi told Blaze News that while the U.S. action in Caracas might give China and Russia “pause in the operations in Latin America,” they “will use the U.S. action as a justification if and when they might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.”

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​Venezuela, Caracas, Russia, Moscow, Cuba, Maduro, Donald trump, Foreign policy, Oil, Trade, Energy, Import, Export, Marco rubio, Intervention, Regime change, Narco-terrorism, Terrorism, Politics, Havana 

When Williamson County GOP Chairwoman Michelle Evans encountered a biological male in the women’s bathroom at the Texas State Capital in 2023, she was there for a legislative debate on gender reassignment surgery for minors.

“So you and other women were just trying to do your business, get in, get out, you know, wash your hands, get a paper towel, and go,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments, adding, “And there was a man that was at the sink washing his hands.”

“He came in to use the facilities, and we quietly let him do his business, but while he was in the stall, I was telling people like, ‘Just so you know, there’s a man in here,’” Evans tells Gonzales, pointing out that she even held the bathroom door open for the man because she wanted him to see her on his way out.

“And I said, ‘Next time, use the bathroom across the hall. It’s for men,’” she recalls. “And then I get back into the House gallery. A friend says, ‘Did you see? They posted on Facebook there was a man in the women’s restroom.’ And I was like, ‘I was in there, send me the photo.’ I tweeted it out, and then they, the Texas Department of Public Safety Capital Police, seized my phone at the behest of Travis County DA Jose Garza.”

“Throughout this entire time, you have been embattled in just trying to fight off making sure that you don’t get criminal charges placed on you for simply sharing a photo that someone else took of a man in a woman’s bathroom,” Gonzales says.

“Right. Fully clothed, face away from the camera. I’ve never named him. I’ve never shown his face,” Evans explains.

Then on December 9, Evans received an initial opinion back from a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that said, “OK, we’re going to greenlight this investigation, it doesn’t violate her constitutional right to free speech.”

While it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, Evans tells Gonzales that she “was happy to get something back because it was just so quiet and it loomed over my head” — and now she’s gaining support from all over the country and world.

Even the Global Government Affairs’ X account posted: “X is proud to support the legal case of Michelle Evans. … The First Amendment protects Ms. Evans’ speech, yet in a 2-1 vote, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a misguided and dangerous opinion allowing the criminal investigation to go forward.”

“X is therefore assisting Ms. Evans in pursuing an appeal before all 17 judges of the Fifth Circuit. We look forward to the full Fifth Circuit correcting this wrong and preserving free speech, which is the foundation of American democracy,” the post continued.

“It’s like a rocket to the moon at this point,” Evans says, adding, “The story has new legs now and people are kind of understanding that this is happening in Texas.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sharing, Camera phone, Free, Upload, Video, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze media, Michelle evans, Men in womens bathroom, Mentally ill men, Mental illness, Transgenderism, Texas politics 

As Minnesota reels from the day care fraud scandal, the Feeding Our Future scam, a separate scheme that sparked broader investigations into the state’s oversight failures, continues to unfold in the courts.

The $250 million COVID-era con, which involved defrauding a taxpayer-subsidized child nutrition program, has already resulted in 78 individuals facing charges and 57 convictions, with additional charges pending.

Much like the alleged day care scheme, in which care center owners allegedly received kickbacks from the government for children they never served, many of those working with the purported nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future were charged with billing for food that was never provided to children. Many of those involved in both of these scandals are Somali.

‘To be clear, this is not an isolated scheme.’

In September 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota announced the first wave of federal criminal charges against dozens of individuals tied to Feeding Our Future for their alleged role in scamming the Federal Child Nutrition Program, which provides free meals to children in need.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates the program, distributing federal taxpayer dollars on a per-meal basis to the Minnesota Department of Education, which oversees the program locally. The MDE then provides reimbursement funds to sponsoring agencies such as Feeding Our Future that support sites that distribute meals directly to those in need.

The first 47 defendants were accused of using government funds to enrich themselves while falsely claiming the money was used to feed over 30,000 children daily.

As part of the conspiracy, defendants allegedly formed numerous shell companies to receive and launder the taxpayer proceeds, submitting fraudulent documentation, including meal count sheets, food invoices, and attendance rosters with fake names. The Department of Justice reported that one of the fabricated rosters listed names created by a random-name-generating website. Some defendants allegedly used an Excel formula to populate random ages between 7 and 17, since the sites could be reimbursed only for meals provided to children.

The scheme allowed Feeding Our Future, which was founded in 2016 and claimed to have opened over 250 sites, to receive more than $18 million in administrative fees alone. The DOJ also claimed that some of the nonprofit’s employees accepted bribes and kickbacks, many in the form of cash disguised as “consulting fees,” from individuals and companies.

Instead of feeding children, the defendants allegedly used these funds to purchase luxury vehicles, travel internationally, and buy property in Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Kenya, and Turkey.

The defendants’ charges included conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery.

RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule

Photo by Brianna Soukup/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

The most prominent defendant to face charges is Feeding Our Future founder and executive director Aimee Bock.

When the MDE attempted to conduct oversight of the nonprofit’s sites and reimbursement claims, Bock and her organization responded by filing a lawsuit against the agency in November 2020, alleging that the MDE had discriminated against the nonprofit based on race, national origin, color, and religion. Feeding Our Future asserted that the MDE’s “administrative and procedural hurdles” were preventing low-income and minority children from accessing federally funded food programs.

Former FBI Director Christopher Wray described the scandal as an “egregious plot to steal public funds meant to care for children in need.”

By October 2022, the first guilty pleas in the case began to emerge, with four defendants admitting they knowingly and willfully conspired to commit the fraud. By February 2024, the DOJ had filed nearly two dozen additional indictments and secured at least 10 convictions, through guilty pleas and jury verdicts.

Further charges emerged in June 2024 when five of the defendants were accused of attempting to bribe a juror.

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 36, along with four other defendants, conspired to pay Juror 52 $120,000 in exchange for returning a not-guilty verdict.

According to the DOJ, the defendants targeted this particular juror because she was the youngest and a person of color. Their selection process included researching her online and obtaining her home address and information on her family’s background. One defendant was accused of following the juror home after she left the courthouse and placing a GPS tracker on her vehicle to collect information about her daily habits.

They allegedly sought to pay Juror 52 $200,000 in cash if she returned a not-guilty verdict on all counts for all defendants. Additionally, they planned to provide her with a list of “arguments to convince other jurors,” which apparently included persuading them that the prosecution was motivated by racial animus.

While all of the defendants were charged with conspiracy to bribe a juror, bribery of a juror, and corruptly influencing a juror, Farah faced an additional charge of obstruction of justice after he allegedly performed a factory reset on his phone to delete evidence of the bribe attempt.

Farah, the co-owner and operator of a for-profit restaurant that participated in the fraud scheme, was described by the DOJ as playing a leading role in the scam, personally pocketing over $8 million. Farah sent some of the stolen taxpayer funds he collected overseas, including laundering money through China and purchasing real estate in Kenya. The DOJ stated that the overseas assets cannot be recovered.

After Farah’s passport was seized and he was informed that he was the target of a federal investigation, he applied for a new passport in downtown Minneapolis, claiming it had been lost. Farah successfully obtained a new passport and attempted to flee the country by purchasing a one-way ticket to Kenya. Law enforcement took him into custody before he could leave.

He was ultimately convicted of numerous counts, including wire fraud, federal programs bribery, money laundering, and false statements in a passport application. He was sentenced in August to 28 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

All of the defendants involved in the bribery scheme pleaded guilty.

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Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

A federal jury in March found mastermind Bock and co-defendant Salim Said guilty for their roles in the scheme. Jurors determined that the co-conspirators formed dozens of shell companies to enroll as food program sites. Said, the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, from April 2020 through November 2021, claimed to have served more than 3.9 million meals to children through the restaurant’s food site and another 2.2 million meals to other food sites.

Bock was convicted on multiple counts, including wire fraud and bribery. Said was convicted of wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering, among other crimes.

Some of the actors accused of defrauding the Federal Child Nutrition Program were also tied to a scam impacting the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Autism Program.

The DOJ filed charges on September 24 against 28-year-old Asha Farhan Hassan, claiming she participated in a $14 million autism fraud scheme. Hassan was previously charged in connection with the Feeding Our Future scandal.

According to the DOJ, Hassan registered Smart Therapy LLC in November 2019 and falsely listed herself as the sole owner. She enrolled the business as a provider agency in the EIDBI Autism Program, claiming to provide Applied Behavior Analysis therapy to autistic children. She also enrolled in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future, claiming that her company served up to 1,200 meals per day to children.

Hassan allegedly hired unqualified individuals, often 18- or 19-year-old relatives with no formal training, to treat autism. To facilitate her government kickback scheme, she approached Somali parents to recruit their children to receive treatment, the DOJ said. If the child did not have an autism diagnosis, her team worked to qualify the child for subsidized services.

Parents reportedly received monthly cash payments ranging from $300 to $1,500 for participating in the scheme. These payments were allegedly hidden in fraudulent Medicaid billing. Several families reportedly went to other autism centers that offered to pay larger kickbacks than Hassan’s Smart Therapy.

Hassan pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud last month.

“From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson stated. “Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network. The challenge is immense, but our work continues.”

The DOJ continues to file charges against those allegedly involved in these fraudulent schemes. In November, the department indicted its 78th defendant tied to Feeding Our Future.

The Feeding Our Future scandal exposed only a fraction of the pervasive fraud schemes plaguing Minnesota’s government, driven by lax oversight under the leadership from members of the left-leaning Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. This initial discovery has since led to the uncovering of even more potentially stolen taxpayer dollars, such as the recent day care scandal.

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