Dozens of those lined up outside the Hong Kong court where Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years on Monday had been there all night, keeping vigil. They’d camped out so as to be in position to put themselves at risk by standing with Lai, whose only crime was publishing pro-democracy journalism and then refusing to back down.

Courage is contagious, so how right Beijing is to see this 78-year-old Chinese-born UK citizen – “a man unfortunately very close to dying,” his son said on Tuesday – as a threat to lies.

In December, after a two-year show trial, he was found guilty of a conspiracy to collude with foreign forces – meeting with American officials – and a conspiracy to publish seditious materials, a.k.a. facts, in Apple Daily, the popular newspaper he founded in 1995.

“This is a dark day in Hong Kong’s history,” with dissent now treated as a serious crime, one of Lai’s lawyers, Jonathan Price, said at a Tuesday news conference via Zoom.

Press freedom is only a memory in the once-autonomous territory.

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Let's get this out of the way right at the start: I have questions but no answers. But, dang, are the questions head-scratchingly fascinating for what they very nearly almost reveal about wartime life in Russia and on the frontlines of the Russo-Ukraine War.

It all started, as so many things do these days, with a popular messaging platform.

In Russia's case, the platform is Telegram, an end-to-end encrypted sharing platform that anyone can use — including soldiers on the battlefield. And this might shock you, but Russian strongman Vladimir Putin respects Telegram's power, and even feted some of its most popular users who just happen to be Russian nationalists unafraid to call Putin's generals to account.

Pretty much everything you get from Russia's official news outlets like RT and TASS reads like Rosy Scenario wrote it, but Telegram milbloggers..  .  .

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For half a century, the American Left has done its best to cancel the future.

We were promised nuclear-powered everything. Clean electricity too cheap to meter. Cities in the desert. Ocean liners and maybe even airplanes running on atoms. Nuclear rockets cutting the trip to Mars to months instead of years.

Instead, Democrats gave us rolling blackouts, German-style “energy transitions,” and a never-ending string of hysterical predictions that never came true and for which no one apologized (even if they remembered them at all).

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In yet another return to sanity, the Trump administration is now planning to roll back a key Obama administration climate "finding" that was used to regulate the daylights out of energy production in the United States. That Obama-era regulation identified six greenhouse gases requiring regulation, which included CO2.

President Donald Trump's administration is poised to walk back an Obama-era greenhouse gas finding that serves as a lynchpin for justifying climate regulations across the country on Wednesday.

The 2009 "endangerment finding" identifies six greenhouse gases that the Obama administration said pose "a threat to public health and welfare." That harm finding was then used to justify sweeping climate regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), such as raising fuel economy standards and limiting power plant emissions, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hailed the move as cutting through government red tape in an interview with the Journal.

Those regulations, of course, were like putting a sea anchor on the economy. It seems Democrats never saw a scheme for jacking up energy costs that they didn't like, and the Obama people were no exceptions. Now we're seeing some of the stupidity reversed.

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On and off this week, I have been thinking about the differences between the 59-day temper tantrums of the Occupy Wall Street “protests” back in 2011 and what we are witnessing on the Minneapolis streets today, and it struck me how much more aggressively “Alinsky” they have become.

Left-wing activist Saul Alinsky published 13 Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals in 1971.

It was an instruction manual for “community organizers” conceived amid the political turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s, addressing a new generation of activists.

But no matter what you think about Alinsky, his rules were logical.

What we are seeing today is not.

Ronald Reagan’s famous joke comes to mind: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” I firmly believe this is true.

They invent things. They take a factual event, add irrational emotion, and come up with the most horrific explanation possible to keep the fear, adrenaline, and anger flowing.

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Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to spot an email scam.

They were flawed. Bad grammar, broken formatting, poor spelling and typos, and a sort of odd cadence often referred to as "Engrish" exposed them for what they were: attempts to extract money from "rich" Americans, most commonly by people outside America.

Often the scams seemed reasonable, except when they weren't, as with the famous Prince of Nigeria scam: send me a couple thousand dollars so I can release my $1.7 million account, and I'll split it with you.

And for a little while they worked, until people's reason caught up with their greed.

They were profitable for scammers, who could send an email to thousands of people in hopes that maybe ten would fall for the scam. And they did. But more scammers got into the business, and as the market grew crowded, the suckers grew scarcer. The scams had to get better in order to turn a profit.

So they did.

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They tell you to move on. They tell you to accept it. They sneer that you are undermining democracy merely by demanding that democracy prove it is real.

Let us state the obvious with crystalline clarity. A republic does not endure on liturgical incantations recited by news anchors and bureaucrats.

It endures on evidence, transparency, and the immutable right of the citizen to inspect the machinery by which power is conferred.

In 2020, when tens of millions of Americans watched a presidential election mutate into an un-auditable, procedurally elastic, statistically grotesque spectacle, the response from the political class was not inquiry but suppression.Not review but reprisal. Not investigation but excommunication.

One can scarcely imagine a more brazen inversion of democratic legitimacy. Those who asked the questions were declared the enemy, while those who demanded silence were celebrated as defenders of democracy. This was not merely an election. This was a confidence heist.

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In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union.

Not all Unionists believed that war was inevitable. Some, in fact, were happy to be done with the departing South and thus see their stain of slavery gone from the Union.

Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice.

But after Fort Sumter, Lincoln — who was hated as much by the Confederates as Trump is by the woke and socialist left — gained a consensus that the Constitution had no clauses about any lawful departure from the union.

But it did operate under a clear supremacy clause that made state obstruction of federal law and occupation of federal property veritable sedition.

Lincoln and the preservationists felt that they easily had the moral high ground of abolition versus the continuance of slavery.

Nor did they want a North America of fragmenting, warring nations in the manner of Europe.

Something similar is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.

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One thing that’s overlooked in Rules for Radicals – even by Alinsky himself – is the key role played by what I call “Alinsky Republicans” or “Alinsky conservatives.”

These are the people who, despite their professed opposition to everything Alinsky and his book were trying to achieve, act as the catalyst – the trigger or fuse – for the climactic events leading to victory for radical activists.

These are the defeatists, the doom trolls, who, after being frozen and personalized in good Alinskian fashion, simply give up, throw in the towel, and sell out the cause they supposedly represent.

They act as a kind of seed, in the same way that dust particles seed rainclouds, around which other weak sisters can congregate until enough come together to bring down the entire system and allow the barbarian hordes in.

They’re always around, waiting in the background.

They’re always active, always ready to surrender.

They’re active today.

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There’s something genuinely funny going on in the United Kingdom right now.

The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing "radicalism") to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.

The concern, as always, was “radicalization.”

They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?

Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country.

Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.

As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British.

She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.

What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.

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There’s something genuinely funny going on in the United Kingdom right now.

The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing "radicalism") to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.

The concern, as always, was “radicalization.”

They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?

Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country.

Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.

As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British.

She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.

What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.

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This week, the New York Times published an article called "Americans Are Turning Against Gay People," and if you're wondering whether the paper has completely lost touch with reality, the answer is yes.

The piece opens with some gushing about a show I’ve never even heard of — and I suspect you haven’t, either — called Heated Rivalry, featuring gay hockey players, suggesting that its success proves "acceptance of queer love continues to grow."

The authors, Tessa Charlesworth and Eli Finkel, lament that this is not the case.

"We wish we could share that optimism," they write, before citing research showing that acceptance of gay people peaked around 2020 and has "sharply reversed" since then.

I’d be willing to bet that most people haven’t heard of Heated Rivalry, but even so, it’s irrelevant.

Gay characters have been on television and in movies for decades, often as leads.

These days, you’d have a tougher time finding a show or movie that doesn’t feature LGBTQ characters.

If you watch game shows, you’ve probably wondered if they have quotas for LGBTQ contestants, and if they’re required to boast about their sexual orientation.

Nevertheless, the article expresses shock that anti-gay bias reversed course after two decades.

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This week, the New York Times published an article called "Americans Are Turning Against Gay People," and if you're wondering whether the paper has completely lost touch with reality, the answer is yes.

The piece opens with some gushing about a show I’ve never even heard of — and I suspect you haven’t, either — called Heated Rivalry, featuring gay hockey players, suggesting that its success proves "acceptance of queer love continues to grow."

The authors, Tessa Charlesworth and Eli Finkel, lament that this is not the case.

"We wish we could share that optimism," they write, before citing research showing that acceptance of gay people peaked around 2020 and has "sharply reversed" since then.

I’d be willing to bet that most people haven’t heard of Heated Rivalry, but even so, it’s irrelevant.

Gay characters have been on television and in movies for decades, often as leads.

These days, you’d have a tougher time finding a show or movie that doesn’t feature LGBTQ characters.

If you watch game shows, you’ve probably wondered if they have quotas for LGBTQ contestants, and if they’re required to boast about their sexual orientation.

Nevertheless, the article expresses shock that anti-gay bias reversed course after two decades.

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Now, to paraphrase another famous intuitive seat-of-their-pants fictional type, I am not a smart girl, but I know what a weird coincidence is.

If one really pays attention, I would have to say we have several all running in sequence in Minneapolis, which makes it an even bigger weird coincidence in itself.

Which I'd bet good money means that, from the beginning, none of this has been a coincidence at all.

You tell me.

The very first thing to take note of is how all these people appeared on Minnesota streets - specifically - with the same printed signs and shrieking the same anti-ICE, pro-illegal immigrant language.

It's awfully peculiar considering that illegal alien deportations had been humming along unabated and virtually unnoticed for years, right up to the point when there was a spike and a 180° reversal of tone and rhetoric.

Fortunately, there are people who chart these things, which helps pinpoint the exact moment the tenor shifts.

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The  Chagos giveaway is coming to its reckoning. At last.

What Sir Keir Starmer once presented as a neat diplomatic housekeeping exercise has turned into a rolling crisis of strategy, law, and political competence.

The Prime Minister’s decision to surrender the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, while leasing back Diego Garcia, now collides with parliamentary upheaval, American anger, and a growing sense that the government has blundered into a trap of its own making.

Against this misjudgment, a small but determined resistance took shape.

The Great British PAC, chaired by Advance UK’s leader Ben Habib, recognised early that the issue went far beyond post-colonial symbolism.

It treated the proposed transfer as a question of national security and democratic legitimacy.

The PAC funded legal challenges on behalf of Chagossians who had been shut out of negotiations, mobilised public pressure, and forced MPs and peers to examine a deal the government hoped to slide through unchallenged.

Most significantly, the PAC was instrumental in helping organise the formation of a Chagossian government-in-exile, giving displaced islanders a coherent political voice for the first time.

What began as an obscure territorial adjustment became a cause with human faces and constitutional consequences.

The House of Lords proved more awake to those consequences than Downing Street expected.

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[Daniel Hannan, Baron Hannan of Kingsclere, is a friend of mine, member of the British House of Lords, and Britain’s smartest patriot.  He published this article in the Daily Telegraph today, entitled: Britain Is Heading For Utter Ruin, And Neither The Parties Nor The Voters Are Prepared To Stop It. 

It is a terrifying warning of what will happen to America if the Dems are allowed to rig the midterms little more than 9 months from now, because Sens Thune and Grassley are such pussies they won’t rescind the filibuster as Trump demands in order to pass the SAVE Act and other legislation requiring Paper Ballots, Citizenship ID, Same-Day Voting, and banning Mail-in Ballots.  Read what Daniel has to say about Britain now in the light of America’s future right around the corner.]

 

What a dreadful week. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether there will be anything left to salvage. I don’t mean Keir Starmer, whose approval ratings have already collapsed irremediably. No, I mean for Britain.

Everything that elevated us above the run of nations is being lost: our competitiveness, our sovereignty, our credit-worthiness, our prestige. We are diminished morally, financially and, after the Chagos surrender, physically.

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This morning the Supreme Court will hear Trump v. Cook, a case that began with an unprecedented move: President Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. As usual, lower courts blocked him.

The press is framing this as a fight about “central bank independence” and even inflation fears. But that deliberately misses the real question at stake:

Do we still have a Constitution, or do we have a permanent ruling class — credentialed, insulated, and effectively unfireable — running the country while elections serve as a ceremonial change of figureheads?

Trump v. Cook is not an isolated dispute. It is the Federal Reserve chapter in the same story the Court already confronted last month in Trump v. Slaughter, the FTC case that squarely asks the Supreme Court to admit what has been obvious since 1935: Humphrey’s Executor was a constitutional disaster.

Simply put, today’s argument is about whether the Supreme Court will continue to bless an unconstitutional fourth branch of government, run by “experts,” insulated from the voters, and wielding coercive power without democratic accountability.

Or to put that another way, does the Constitution’s Article 2, Section 1 have any meaning?

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The Tides Foundation rarely appears prominently in public debate, yet it occupies a critical position in modern American civic life.

It is not a political party, a campaign committee, or a government agency. It does not pass laws, issue rulings, or command police forces.

And yet, through its structure, it exerts influence over how laws are enforced, how public norms are shaped, and how activism is sustained.

 

This essay is not an accusation of illegality. It is an examination of architecture, the legal and institutional design that allows power to be exercised without visibility, responsibility, or direct democratic consent.

The name Tides itself was chosen deliberately.

It reflects a view of social change not as something achieved through elections, legislation, or singular moments, but as something that advances through cumulative, distributed pressure over time.

 

A tide is slow. It is not dramatic. It does not announce itself as an act of will.

It reshapes the shoreline through persistence, not force, and it is difficult to attribute any specific change to a single wave or actor.

That metaphor captures the organization’s founding philosophy: Durable change emerges from many aligned actions, operating across institutions, advancing steadily, and appearing natural even when driven by distant causes.

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With the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in a bold Jan. 3 military raid and a large naval force still prowling the southern Caribbean to ensure that Maduro’s successors cooperate with the Trump administration, other subtle, but key, developments in the region can be overlooked.

Among under-the-wire events is a December 2025 agreement between the United States and Venezuela’s neighbor, Guyana.

That agreement could have profound implications, not only in the immediate context of unfolding events in Venezuela, but also for the long-term execution of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, unveiled in November 2025 by U.S. President Donald Trump.

 

A U.S. delegation led by senior Pentagon adviser Patrick Weaver and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of War Joseph Humire met with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali in the nation’s capital, Georgetown, on Dec. 9.

Ali told Guyanese media outlets that the nations had signed a statement of intent to “expand joint military cooperation,” a process that will be “evolving ... in the coming months.” He stated that there “will be greater discussions on more levels of cooperation and the integration of [the two countries’] work.”

The statement of intent is not a formal mutual defense treaty, he said, calling it a “reinforcement” of long-term training and collaboration between the United States and Guyana.

But such a pact could be on the table, Ali hinted, referring to the U.S. military effort dubbed Operation Southern Spear.

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When the Trump administration sent some 2,000 immigration agents to the Twin Cities area, they were met by activists who trailed their movements and harassed them outside their hotels.

The activists are members of radical groups that together have received millions of dollars from the Left's premier foundations and dark money networks, including George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

At the center of the unrest is the Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group founded to fight climate change that has since directed its local chapters to fight the Trump administration. For Sunrise Twin Cities, that means tormenting ICE agents on the ground.

The group holds in-person "action trainings" on how to "stop ICE & build a revolution." It also maintains a running list of the Twin Cities hotels housing ICE agents and organizes late-night "noise demonstrations" aimed at making it "impossible" for those hotels to operate.

 

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[This Live Long & Prosper column is dedicated to TTP’s Skye – Durk Pearson.  I remember many a conversation with him on the epigenetic switches that turn  our DNA genes on and off---- JW]

We’ve been told that our genetic destiny is written in our DNA. However, research is gradually dismantling this fatalistic view.

Genetics may influence approximately 25 percent to 30 percent of how we age. The remaining portion is influenced by factors entirely within our control: what we eat, how we move, how we handle stress, others, and ourselves.

Dr. Lucia Aronica, who teaches epigenetics and nutrition at the Stanford University Medical School, embodies this balance of nature and nurture.

After 17 years of epigenetic research, she sat down for an interview with me, highlighting that: “You are not just a passive reader of your genetic code, but an active writer of your health story every day with every choice.”

 

Rewriting Your Software of Life

Aronica suggests that to understand epigenetics, we should view DNA as computer hardware—an unchangeable biological structure present in every cell—and epigenetics as the software that tells your cells which programs to run and when.

The prefix “epi” means “on top of,” referring to molecular switches that sit atop your genes, turning them on or off without altering the underlying code.

“Here’s the beautiful part: You can rewrite that software starting today,” Aronica said.

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The Iranian uprising is one of the three most moving expressions of human defiance so far this century. If the regime is toppled, it will constitute a fulcrum in the history of the world. Yet the hypocritical response from the liberal establishment has been as nauseating as it has been infuriating.

From Keir Starmer to Tucker Carlson,  a startling number of our loudest “human rights” voices seem to be taking the words of the Persian mystic Rumi – “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there” – rather too literally.

Surely, if there was ever a moment not to go beyond “ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”, now would be the time. Yet, armies of Western notables are either downplaying or simply ignoring this dramatic struggle for freedom.

These are the people that are passionate when their activism harms the West, but whose voices seem to desert them when the tyrant wears a turban.

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It’s interesting that our liberal friends are all fainting this week because of the death of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 at the hands of an ICE agent during a “peaceful protest” where she was using her SUV to block ICE operations.

Almost exactly five years ago on January 6 our liberal friends had no problem with a Capitol police officer shooting Ashli Babbit as she climbed unarmed through a broken window into the Capitol in an “armed insurrection” against the United States government.

What is going on with our liberal friends training divorced mothers of three to engage in protest against ICE agents searching for illegal aliens as prescribed by law?

Let’s analyze the January 6 and January 7 narratives from the liberal point of view.

For our liberal friends the violent Capitol riots on January 6 were an existential threat to the System. OMG! What if the Senate had thrown out the official results of the 2020 election and considered alternate slates of Electors! It would have been the end of the world as we know it.

Er, no, dear liberal friends. But we might have got a look into the national problem of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

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In an age where complexity is often mistaken for sophistication, it is easy to forget a principle that has guided human understanding for thousands of years: truth is usually simple.

Thomas Sowell captured this perfectly when he observed that people who pride themselves on complexity often overlook the fact that reality itself is not complicated -- what becomes complicated is the debate about reality.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current national conversation surrounding biological sex, gender identity, and the question before the Supreme Court this week regarding transgender participation in women’s sports.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on whether states may restrict biological males who identify as female from competing in women’s sports, the issue has been wrapped in layers of ideology, emotion, and political rhetoric. But when we strip away the noise and return to first principles -- biology, history, law, and common sense -- the truth becomes remarkably clear.

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First Syria, then Iran, and now Venezuela. Slowly, but surely, Vladimir Putin’s hopes of creating an alternative network of alliances to challenge American hegemony is disintegrating.

For the past two decades, Putin has worked steadily to build Moscow’s military and trade ties with Caracas as part of a deliberate attempt to extend the Kremlin’s sphere of influence into America’s backyard. An added bonus of Putin’s long-standing support for Maduro was that it helped to sustain the anti-American regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua, with Caracas supplying them with everything they need, from oil to food.

China, a country Putin sees as a key partner in his burgeoning axis of autocratic powers, also enjoyed close ties with the Maduro regime. Now that the Chavist era in Venezuela has finally drawn to a close following US president Donald Trump’s dramatic military intervention at the weekend, Russia faces the very real prospect of witnessing the collapse of all three of their Latin American allies.

Viewed from this context, Trump’s decision to remove Maduro looks more like a geopolitical masterstroke than simply a brazen bid to seize control of Venezuela’s oil riches. With Maduro and his wife safely locked up in a Brooklyn jail, Caracas’s ability to function as an epicenter for anti-US activity for Russia and China has ended.

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Forget January 6. It turns out January 7 might go down as the date when insurrection really arrived in America — not from the MAGA right, but from the anti-Trump left.

In the aftermath of the fatal shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis of a woman who rammed an ICE agent with her vehicle, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced at a press conference that he had issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize to “protect Minnesotans” from “rogue ICE agents.”

It’s an almost unbelievable series of statements from a sitting governor. If taken at face value, it amounts to a threat to use the Minnesota National Guard for an anti-federal insurrection If Walz actually follows through with that threat, it will be an open act of sedition.

In that case, the moderate response would be to immediately arrest Walz, federalize the Minnesota National Guard, and declare martial law..

The lawlessness of the leftist mob is to be expected at this point. That’s not to say they shouldn’t all be rounded up and prosecuted at least as severely as the Biden administration prosecuted J6ers. But something must also be done about the Democrat politicians who are inciting violence and, in Walz’s case, flirting with insurrection.  They all need orange jumpsuits.

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President Trump’s push to take control of Venezuela and its oil resources under Operation Absolute Resolve is good news for the United States and Europe, and bad news for Cuba, Russia, China, and Iran: America is reclaiming strategic ground.

It matters because the world is entering an era of unprecedented energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centres, and digital infrastructure. Reliable, affordable energy is now a prerequisite for technological leadership. Nations that fail to secure supply will fall behind.

China currently receives the majority of Venezuela’s crude exports. US leverage over Venezuelan exports  disrupts China’s ability to secure discounted crude and reinforcing America’s position in global energy markets.

This shift also weakens China’s broader resource strategy in South America, where it is seeking critical minerals for electric vehicles and AI technologies.

But the ripple effects extend beyond China:

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Thanks to a 23 year-old kid with a cell phone exposing the multi-billion Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota – Nick Shirley -- the Trump administration's tactical information operation delivered a surgical "truth bomb" on the Somali-Ilhan Omar-Tampon Tim Walz scams, triggering a nationwide uproar.

Labeled “Traitor Tim” by Elon Musk, Walz’s political career is toast. All signs suggest this informational-warfare playbook is now being refined, with California in the crosshairs.

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The Democrats have been obsessing over the events of Jan. 6 for five straight years and have campaigned on their phony “insurrectionist” theme for all that time while offering precious little in the way of ideas and policies that would improve the lives of Americans.

Their “January 6 Committee” was a one-sided farce where grandstanders like former GOP Reps. Cryin' Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) and Liz Cheney (WY-AL) preened for the cameras in what they hoped would be their 15 minutes of fame.

Thousands were jailed and woefully overcharged for their part in the protests, and Democrats still push false storylines to this day (like the one alleging that law enforcement officers were killed at the Capitol, when none were).

The Trump administration isn’t taking today’s fifth anniversary lying down, and on today, Jan.6, 2026, they issued a new website disputing many of the Democrats' claims and slamming then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-11) for not securing the Capitol.

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The dramatic change in Venezuela's leadership is going to have impacts around the world, but probably most significantly in Cuba, which has relied on Venezuela for fuel for decades.

For decades, Venezuela provided the communist-run island with the bulk of its fuel and financing in exchange for Cuban doctors, teachers and security personnel. Without those programs, the island’s already devastating energy woes will worsen and its shortages of food, medicine and basic goods will become even more pronounced.

“They’ve been left without a godfather, a benefactor that has been paying their bills, and they’re totally bankrupt,” said Emilio Morales, president of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group. “How are they going to survive?”

During a meeting of Cuba’s legislature last month, officials painted a grim economic picture as they placed blame for the current crisis on long-running US sanctions. But a cut-off of shipments of Venezuelan crude is catastrophic.

The lack of fuel is leading to massive, economy-crushing blackouts in Cuba.

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For America.

We’ve decided to mimic Time Magazine and use "Person of the Year" even if it's a whole bunch of people. Worry not, I won't be mimicking anything else from Time.

It is with great pleasure and honor that TTP announces that the agents of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are/is the Person of the Year for 2025. No one deserves it more than them.

Here's a reality check on what ICE does from something a friend of mine conveyed:

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