America again stands on the edge of betrayal, watching mobs assault federal officers while judges call it “restraint.”

This is not new. Between 1876 and 1878, the same script played out as those sworn to uphold the law were branded as tyrants and those undermining it claimed the mantle of freedom. When the federal government lost the will to enforce its own laws, violence filled the vacuum.

How the first ‘Redemption’ worked

After the Civil War, Republican coalitions in the South — freedmen, poor whites, and Northern reformers — were crushed by white Democrats who called themselves “Redeemers.” They promised “home rule” but delivered a racial caste system enforced by terror and political exclusion.

The Redeemers invoked ‘home rule’ to dismantle Reconstruction. Today’s Democratic left invokes ‘human rights’ to paralyze national defense.

The last obstacle to that counterrevolution was federal protection of black voters. During the disputed 1876 election, President Ulysses S. Grant stationed troops at polling sites across the South to deter fraud and Ku Klux Klan violence. Democrats in South Carolina vowed to “wade in blood knee-deep” if necessary to reclaim power.

Those troops were the only shield between freedmen and their former masters. But in the Compromise of 1877, federal forces were withdrawn to buy political peace. Reconstruction governments collapsed, schools for freedmen closed, and voting rights vanished. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

Southern Democrats soon made that withdrawal permanent. Wrapping themselves in the rhetoric of liberty and “local control,” they pushed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, criminalizing use of the Army for domestic law enforcement except when Congress expressly authorized it.

The narrative was set: Federal troops at the polls meant “tyranny”; “home rule” meant “harmony.” In truth, the act cemented the collapse of Reconstruction and led to the birth of Jim Crow, which paralyzed federal defense of civil rights for nearly a century.

RELATED: Stop pretending Posse Comitatus neuters the president

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The rhetoric of reversal

Debates over the Posse Comitatus Act dripped with moral inversion. Southern Democrats like Rep. John Atkins of Tennessee and William Kimmel of Maryland denounced President Rutherford B. Hayes as a “monarch” who preferred bullets to ballots. Federal soldiers protecting black voters were smeared as bloodthirsty brutes and “tools of despotism.”

In that twisted language, enforcing the law became tyranny, while mob rule became freedom.

It was early information warfare: delegitimize the protectors, vindicate the aggressors, and freeze lawful authority into submission.

Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

The new paralysis

A century and a half later, the pattern repeats. Democrats, left-wing activists, and their media allies now use essentially the same language to delegitimize immigration enforcement. ICE and Border Patrol agents, upholding laws passed by Congress, are branded as “fascists.” Federal defense of government facilities is denounced as “militarization.”

Judges cite the Posse Comitatus Act to block National Guard deployments meant to protect ICE offices from violent assaults. In Illinois, U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled that deploying the Guard could “add fuel to the fire that they started,” claiming no evidence of impending “rebellion.” The ruling came days before No Kings Day demonstrations.

The Department of Homeland Security had extended fencing around its Broadview facility after earlier attacks — rioters hurling fireworks, bottles, and tear gas while local officials looked away. When the DHS finally reinforced its defenses, the courts ordered them torn down.

Since June, ICE and Border Patrol have endured shootings, arson attempts, and coordinated ambushes. In Dallas, a sniper targeted an ICE field office. In suburban Chicago, federal agents were rammed and pinned by cartel-linked drivers before returning fire. Local police en route to assist were told to stand down.

Within hours, left-wing outlets and activist networks declared the clash proof of “authoritarianism.” The strategy is deliberate: manufacture chaos, provoke a lawful response, then cite that response as evidence of tyranny.

This is a textbook reflexive control operation — using perception to paralyze power. The Redeemers of 1878 called federal troops “despots” and “usurpers.” Their descendants call federal agents “fascists.” The aim is identical: Erode public trust in lawful authority and make enforcement politically impossible.

Citizenship as the battlefield

Then, as now, the real fight centers on citizenship itself.

In the 19th century, freed black Americans embodied the principle that allegiance and equality before the law, not race or birth, define membership in the republic. That ideal shattered the old Southern order, so Redeemers destroyed it.

Today, citizenship threatens a different order — the globalist one. Citizenship implies borders, duties, and distinctions. So progressives seek to redefine it as exclusionary or immoral. Illegal aliens become “newcomers.” Enforcing the law becomes oppression. The federal obligation to protect citizens morphs into a liability.

What began as Redeemer propaganda has evolved into a post-national orthodoxy: Sovereignty is shameful, and the citizen must yield to the “world citizen.” The result is the same — federal paralysis, selective law enforcement, and mobs empowered by moral cover.

RELATED: A president’s job is to stop the burning if governors won’t

Photo by Minh Connors/Anadolu via Getty Images

Lessons from the first betrayal

The parallels are precise. The Redeemers invoked “home rule” to dismantle Reconstruction; today’s left invokes “human rights” and “de-militarization” to paralyze national defense.

The Posse Comitatus Act was never a sacred constitutional barrier — it was a political tool of retreat. Then it left freedmen defenseless; now it hinders protection of federal agents, citizens, and borders. By turning law into spectacle and restraint into virtue, it leaves our republic unguarded.

History teaches a blunt lesson: Retreat invites terror. When the state retreats, mobs rule. When courts mistake optics for justice, defenders become defendants. The same moral inversion that once enslaved men through “home rule” now threatens to enslave the republic through lawfare.

To survive, America must recover what it lost in 1877 — the courage to act as a nation. Withdrawal is not peace. Compromise, in this instance, is not order. The freedman of this century is the American citizen himself — and the question, once again, is whether the nation that freed him will defend him.

​Opinion & analysis, Posse comitatus, Reconstruction, Civil war, Redeemers, Ku klux klan, Jim crow, Tyranny, Despotism, Home rule, Retribution, Rule of law, Immigration and customs enforcement, Anti-ice protests, Riots, Law and order, Democrats, Leftists, The left, Political violence, W.e.b. dubois, Civil rights, Elections, Rutherford b. hayes, Congress, Department of homeland security, Authoritarianism, Globalists, Citizenship 

When victims’ advocates push for mandatory minimum sentences, the leniency lobby instantly howls about “judicial discretion.” In theory, that’s right: In a just society, judges should have the freedom to weigh every case, tailoring sentences to fit the crimes.

But America doesn’t live in that society. We live in an era when violent crime floods major cities and leftist judges treat predators like misunderstood poets. In this environment, mandatory minimums aren’t cruel — they’re the only remaining safeguard for victims and the public.

It’s not enough to share viral videos of street mayhem. Lawmakers must change the laws.

Recent headlines show what happens when liberal judges turn mercy into malpractice.

Charlotte’s revolving door: North Carolina Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes released Decarlos Brown Jr., the alleged murderer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, despite his long arrest record. Her supervisor, Judge Roy Wiggins, then released Paulette Gibson, accused of stabbing two people, on just $20,000 bail — despite 15 prior arrests.Fifty arrests and counting: Herbert Jordan of Charlotte, arrested Oct. 16 for assaulting a woman, had 50 prior arrests, including 10 attacks on women since 2020. He had been released just weeks earlier on $3,000 bond for another violent assault. The judge’s response this time? Raise the bond to $5,000.A juvenile menace: A 15-year-old in Charlotte was reportedly arrested 111 times since 2023 — 55 vehicle thefts, 45 break-ins, multiple gun charges — and yet was released again. Police say his phone contained searches like “what is the charge for killing an officer?” and “what is capital murder?”D.C.’s “rehabilitate, not punish” justice: In the District of Columbia, two teens who beat a man nearly to death during a carjacking spree were sentenced to probation. Judge Kendra D. Briggs, a Biden appointee, said her job was “to rehabilitate, not to punish.” D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Monday that she would bring federal assault charges.Florida’s near-fatal leniency: In Orange County, 23-year-old Jacoby Vontrell Tillman allegedly choked a jogger unconscious because he “wanted to know what it was like to choke someone out.” He had prior arrests for attempted murder and sexual assault, yet Judge Elaine Barbour released him on a $9,500 bond — over objections from even a left-wing prosecutor.Las Vegas, 2023: Jonathan Lewis Jr., a white 17-year-old, was stomped to death by a mob of black juveniles outside Rancho High School. Prosecutors later downgraded second-degree murder charges to voluntary manslaughter and moved the case to juvenile court. The killers could be free within a few years.

These cases represent thousands of similar stories nationwide: repeat violent offenders cycling through the system, juvenile thugs shielded from real punishment, and judges who treat consequences as optional.

From ‘over-incarceration’ to under-protection

For more than a decade, both parties have joined the bipartisan delusion that America’s problem is “over-incarceration.” The result? A generation of politicians dismantled the tough-on-crime gains of the 1990s and early 2000s under the false promise of “criminal justice reform.”

Yes, some defendants have received unjustly harsh sentences. Yes, political prosecutions and overzealous prosecutors exist. But for every offender punished too severely, dozens walk free after attacking, raping, or killing. The imbalance grows worse each year.

RELATED: The city that chose crime and chaos over courage

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This “leniency-industrial complex” has replaced accountability with excuses. Its apostles treat crime as a symptom of social failure, not individual evil. Meanwhile, victims — especially women and the poor — pay the price for their moral vanity.

Time to rewrite the rules

America doesn’t need another debate about “equity” in sentencing. It needs a crime-control revolution that restores deterrence and puts fear back where it belongs — in the hearts of criminals.

That means tightening judicial discretion, strengthening mandatory minimums for repeat and violent offenders, and ending the revolving door for juvenile predators.

It’s not enough to share viral videos of street mayhem. Lawmakers must change the laws. The public’s patience — and the nation’s safety — won’t survive another decade of judicial compassion for the cruel.

​Opinion & analysis, Crime, Punishment, Mandatory minimum, Leniency, No bail, Rape, Murder, Assault, Prison, Early release, Jail, Soros prosecutor 

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) continued his attacks on the inexperience of his leftist opponent, Zohran Mamdani, in the second and final New York City mayoral debate.

The far-left candidate was blaming Cuomo for the housing crisis under his watch as governor and received loud applause from the audience. Then Cuomo fired back and leveled Mamdani over his record as a New York state assemblyman.

‘You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly, and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America … and then you never showed up for work!’

“He says that taking five years to build affordable housing is the sign of an incompetent government — by his own words, that means he must have led an incompetent government. That is what we are seeing because that is the record that is actually on offer!” said Mamdani.

“I understand my friend doesn’t really understand government,” Cuomo responded.

“The governor doesn’t build housing in New York City,” said Cuomo.

“Not if it’s you!” Mamdani interrupted.

“No!” Cuomo yelled back. “Legally there are jurisdictions. The governor doesn’t pick up trash. He doesn’t run the fire department. That’s what the mayor does. The mayor builds housing. The state allocates funding for localities, and I allocated more funding for housing than any governor in the history of the state of New York!”

Cuomo also got loud applause from his supporters in the audience.

“All right? I did things! You have never had a job. You’ve never accomplished anything,” he continued.

“There is no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives! You don’t know how to run a government, you don’t know how to handle an emergency, and you’ve literally never proposed a bill on anything that you’re now talking about in your campaign!” Cuomo said.

“You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly, and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America. You went from $110,000 to $140,000, and then you never showed up for work, and you missed 80% of the votes!” he said empathically. “Shame on you! Shame on you!”

“It is always a pleasure to hear Andrew Cuomo create his own facts at every debate stage,” Mamdani replied.

He did not dispute Cuomo’s characterization of his time in the Assembly and instead counterattacked on Cuomo’s housing record. Mamdani and Cuomo argued and talked over each other before they were quieted by a moderator to let Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa respond to both.

RELATED: Cuomo strikes at Mamdani while Sliwa goes on the attack in fiery NYC mayoral debate

Photo by Hiroko Masuike-Pool/Getty Images

“I heard the both of them, again fighting like kids in the schoolyard,” said Sliwa. “Zohran, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City!”

One of Mamdani’s most popular policies among New York City voters is his promise to freeze rents in an attempt to ease the high cost of living in the city. Housing experts say that rent freezes almost always backfire by leading to fewer housing units by making them unprofitable.

Most polling has Mamdani ahead of Cuomo, which has caused some to call on Sliwa to drop out of the race in hopes of swinging the advantage to Cuomo.

The mayoral election is less than two weeks away.

The entire debate can be viewed on the YouTube channel for Spectrum News.

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Lifelong Democrat and popular talk show host Bill Maher has long been known to be one of the few voices of reason speaking out on the left, but one recent monologue of his might take the cake for the most reasonable in “Real Time with Bill Maher” history.

Maher went after the left for refusing to disapprove of those among them who are clearly “insane,” explaining that “their cowardice in not marginalizing their own crazies has been their downfall.”

“I couldn’t get Neil deGrasse Tyson — a genius, scientist, and pre-eminent scientific voice in the media — to agree that it was ridiculous for Scientific American and the Atlantic to be claiming that separating sports by sex doesn’t make sense. Yes, it does,” he said. “Actually it makes perfect sense.”

Conservatives, on the other hand, see that it makes sense to separate sports by sex and refuse to “pointlessly” reinvent society.

“They see gender as only a construct and sex is assigned at birth. And they say, ‘We’re not doing that.’ Transing kids by self-diagnosis with no age limit, no parental notification, and no acknowledgment of social contagion. Not doing it,” he explained.

And Maher didn’t stop at the transgender issue — he went after a myriad of left-wing hot-button issues.

“Asylum now covers any reason for anyone to come to America. Not doing it. Homelessness is a lifestyle. Natural immunity doesn’t count anymore. Whiteness is toxic. Penises in women’s prisons. Welcoming the intifada. We’re not doing it,” he said.

“Stop coming up with radically new and often terrible ideas and then in the next breath insist there be no debate about any of it. That if you don’t see it right away and go along, you’re bad, stupid, and deplorable. As if you were saying, ‘Duh, 2 plus 2 equals 5. Isn’t that obvious?’ Yeah, it’s obvious you can’t add,” he continued.

“You can’t just say s**t: Math is racist; queers for Palestine; looting is cool; healthy at any weight; if the men’s football team played the women’s team, it would be a tie. You can’t just say s**t,” he added.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed” believes Maher isn’t far from saying, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party; the Democrat Party left me.”

“Everything he just said in that rant has been said on this show for years and years and years,” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in. “Welcome, Bill.”

“As he’s saying, it’s just common sense,” Gray says. “It’s not even left versus right. It’s just common sense.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, 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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CBS News Chicago released a report in early October claiming that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Broadview detention center had repeatedly dialed 911 with fabricated emergencies.

The report stated that, according to Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills, the police department had received “several questionable 911 calls … from the ICE facility recently,” emphasis added. However, the October 2 article mentioned only one alleged instance and failed to note that the event actually occurred months earlier.

‘Our brave ICE law enforcement should be thanked for risking their lives every day to arrest murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists instead of vilified by sanctuary politicians.’

In the report, CBS shared bodycam footage of police responding to a 911 call that someone had reportedly tampered with the gate at the detention center. When police arrived at the scene, they found two individuals with the CBS News crew.

Mills told the news outlet that he believed ICE’s call was bogus. One police officer told CBS that it did not appear anyone had been tampering with the gate.

“The chief said that was just one of several questionable 911 calls his police department has received from the ICE facility recently,” CBS reported.

However, while the CBS News Chicago broadcast showed the incident report and bodycam footage of the alleged false call, revealing that it occurred on June 15, 2025, the article published on the CBS News website made no mention of the June date. CBS News Chicago also failed to cite any other incidents.

Blaze News contacted CBS News, CBS News Chicago, and Mills to inquire whether they could provide any details about other alleged false calls made by ICE agents.

RELATED: When did my local TV news become leftist propaganda?

Image source: Broadview Police Report

The police report obtained by Blaze News confirmed that the gate-tampering call occurred on June 15, over three months before CBS News’ reporting.

“[The responding officer] made contact with the two individuals who identified themselves as members of a CBS News crew. They stated that they had been in the area for approximately 10 minutes and denied witnessing or participating in any criminal activity, including tampering with the gate,” the report reads.

It notes that an ICE agent at the detention center “approached the news crew and advised them that the property was private and that they were not permitted to enter.”

“The news crew acknowledged the warning and, though initially hesitant, complied with the directive,” the report continues.

RELATED: Trump urges SCOTUS to unleash National Guard in Chicago amid protests, increase in violence against ICE

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security rejected claims that ICE agents at the facility were making false emergency calls to the local police department.

“After a terrorist attack at an ICE facility in Dallas, Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills is choosing to smear our brave ICE law enforcement,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Blaze News. “Our ICE officers are facing a more than 1,000% increase in assaults [including] sniper attacks, cars being used as weapons, and assaults from rioters.”

“Our brave ICE law enforcement should be thanked for risking their lives every day to arrest murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists instead of vilified by sanctuary politicians,” McLaughlin continued. “[It’s] disheartening that even after the terrorist attack and arrests of rioters with guns outside the Broadview ICE facility these sanctuary politicians chose [to] engage in political theatre to inflame hatred of ICE.”

The CBS article was amplified by those on the left, including California Governor Gavin Newsom’s communications director, Izzy Gardon.

“WOAH. CBS News reports ICE has been making bogus calls to 911 and filing false police reports in Chicago,” he wrote in a post on X on October 6, providing a link to the article in the comments.

Bari Weiss, a journalist and the founder of the Free Press, was named editor in chief of CBS News just days after this article was released. She has vowed to make CBS “the most trusted news organization in America and the world.” To guide the outlet’s changes, she outlined 10 “core journalistic values,” including to “[report] on the world as it actually is;” “tell the truth plainly — wherever it leads;” and “endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.”

CBS News, CBS News Chicago, Mills, and Gardon did not respond to a request for comment.

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​News, Cbs news, Cbs, Chicago, Illinois, Thomas mills, Broadview ice facility, Broadview police department, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Bari weiss, Politics 

A man who was found dead on the sidewalk outside of an Albuquerque Dollar Tree was killed by a man riding a tricycle, according to New Mexico police.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said agents were called to the discount store on Goff Blvd. on Sept. 29 at about 7:15 in the morning over a report of a man found unresponsive.

He matched the description of a man caught on surveillance video riding up to the victim on a tricycle and beating him with a rock.

They found that the man was dead, with injuries to his head and face. Police opened a homicide investigation.

On Monday, police arrested Dominic Gabriel Andrade and said he matched the description of a man caught on surveillance video riding up to the victim on a tricycle and beating him with a rock, according to court documents.

The man also appeared to stab the victim in the video.

Andrade had been spotted by U.S. marshals and brought in for questioning. When they searched him, they found a knife in his right pocket. They also found a large cane and a neon green hoodie on his tricycle, both of which matched the surveillance video from the murder scene, according to prosecutors.

The suspect admitted that he had gotten into an argument with the victim on the night that he died, but he claimed that the argument never “got physical,” according to police.

RELATED: 19-year-old student allegedly stabs and kills homeless man who was breaking into cars near USC

A report from KRQE-TV said that the victim was named Michael Chavez and that the video showed him lying down to go to sleep after speaking with Andrade. Then Andrade hit Chavez with a rock multiple times.

KRQE said the video showed Chavez dying later on the sidewalk.

The 48-year-old suspect was charged with tampering with evidence as well as first-degree murder.

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​Dominic gabriel andrade, Tricycle killing, Dollar tree murder, Murder by rock, Crime