Category: Opinion & analysis
How a pro-life law in Kentucky lets mothers get away with murder
Melinda Spencer allegedly took abortion pills, ended the life of her unborn son, and buried his remains in a shallow grave in her backyard.
Yet a law in Kentucky exempting women from prosecution after obtaining an abortion — a law supported by the most influential pro-life organization in the state — appears to have prevented prosecutors from holding Spencer accountable for murder.
If a state refuses to make murder illegal for everyone, then some human beings will remain unprotected by design.
According to court documents cited by local media, Spencer, 35, told Kentucky State Police that the child “was not her boyfriend’s, and she did not want him to find out she was pregnant with another man’s baby.”
To conceal the pregnancy, Spencer allegedly ordered abortion pills online, intending to end the life of her unborn child without medical supervision.
Police say Spencer took the pills the day after Christmas, placed her deceased son in a light bulb box, and buried him in a shallow grave in her backyard. An autopsy determined the child was around 20 weeks’ gestation at the time of his death.
Initially Spencer was charged with first-degree fetal homicide, abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.
This week, however, Kentucky prosecutors dropped the homicide charge — not because they doubt that Spencer intentionally caused the death of her unborn child but because Kentucky law explicitly prohibits prosecuting a pregnant woman who murders her own unborn child.
Miranda King, the prosecutor overseeing the case, acknowledged this limitation directly. In a public statement, she explained that the relevant statute “prohibits the prosecution of a pregnant woman who caused the death of her unborn child.” Spencer still faces the remaining, lesser charges.
King made clear that this frustrating outcome was not her preference.
“I sought this job with the intention of being a pro-life prosecutor but must do so within the boundaries allowed by the Kentucky state law I’m sworn to defend,” she said. “I will prosecute the remaining lawful charges fully and fairly.”
Kentucky is widely regarded as a conservative state with strong pro-life laws. Many Americans assume abortion was effectively banned there after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This case exposes how incomplete that assumption is.
RELATED: Why the pro-life movement fails without a Christian worldview
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Kentucky’s leading pro-life advocacy organization, Kentucky Right to Life, has long supported laws that shield women from criminal liability for abortion. In practice, this ensures that abortion remains legal for women, even if clinics are closed.
In 2021, Kentucky Right to Life joined more than 70 other pro-life organizations in signing a national letter declaring opposition to “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” who obtain abortions.
Since then, the organization has opposed multiple abolition bills that would have established equal protection under the law for unborn children — specifically because such legislation would allow for the prosecution of mothers who willfully procure abortions.
Addia Wuchner, Kentucky Right to Life’s executive director, opposed an abolition bill in 2023 on the grounds that it might expose mothers to criminal charges. She took the same position last year, arguing that women are victims of coercion by the abortion industry.
That framing has deadly consequences.
Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
Following Spencer’s arrest, Wuchner publicly expressed sympathy for the accused, describing Spencer as likely being “on her own” and calling that “probably the greatest tragedy,” before adding that “of course … a child’s life was lost.”
The ordering is revealing. The alleged murder of a child was treated as secondary to the emotional state of the alleged murderer. Empathy displaced justice and accountability.
There are cases in which women are coerced into abortions under genuine duress. But coercion cannot be presumed as a universal explanation. By all available evidence, Spencer appears to have acted deliberately. Kentucky law nevertheless forecloses full accountability — and ensures that the central act in this case cannot be adjudicated as homicide.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, states like Kentucky have continued to see record abortion levels, largely through self-managed chemical abortions ordered online. Laws that categorically exempt women from prosecution guarantee this outcome.
If a state refuses to make murder illegal for everyone, then some human beings will remain unprotected by design. And when that exemption applies even in cases involving concealment, burial, and admitted intent, justice becomes impossible by statute.
So long as that remains the case, women who willfully kill their unborn children in Kentucky will continue to get away with murder.
America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself
Let’s face it: $20 trillion is a lot of money.
One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of 20,000 billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! In fact, it’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.
The American economy sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.
This is the total amount spent globally — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold windmills and solar panels worldwide while opening a new coal-fired power plant every month.
What was the net effect of this “Green” Marshall Plan? Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.
We also saw the deindustrialization of the European and American economies — not just with higher prices at the gas pump and on electric bills, but a stealth green tax that was passed on to consumers on everything. This is the culprit of our American and global affordability crisis. So much treasure and pain for a 2% reduction in the share of hydrocarbons.
Ironically, a byproduct of this Green Hunger Games was political populism.
What a waste. The worst bang for the public and private buck ever. Yet the Chicken Little believers of the Church of Settled Science and the grifters who profited from it will still sing in unison that it failed because they did not go far enough. If only the global community spent and regulated more!
In contrast, the Marshall Plan (1948-1951) rebuilt a decimated Europe into an industrial, interconnected, and peaceful powerhouse. It was a great success by any measure. At the time, its price tag was huge: $13.3 billion in nominal 1948-1951 dollars, equivalent to approximately $150 billion in today’s dollars.
Since a trillion is such a large number, let’s divide $20 trillion by an inflation-adjusted Marshall Plan of $150 billion, and we have 133 Marshall opportunities. Money was not the problem. To give a sense of the comparative bang for buck, by the Marshall program’s end, the aggregated gross national product of the participating nations rose by more than 32% and industrial output increased by a remarkable 40%.
President Trump has been on the global funding rounds and has secured more than $18 trillion in foreign investment. That’s roughly the equivalent of 120 Marshall Plans — just 13 shy of $20 trillion — to be invested here and nowhere else.
Unlike NAFTA, through which the rich got richer under the banner of free markets in exchange for cheaper consumer goods, Trump’s policy is a recipe for prosperity for all Americans.
RELATED: Trump administration saves billions in simple move globalists and climate activists alike will hate
Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Making these investments a reality in America will require a growing army of blue- and white-collar workers. With the wealth that it creates, our debt could be paid down and, finally, retired. Social Security and Medicare would be placed on a solid footing for time immemorial. All our public obligations to one another would be met by ever-growing prosperity, not by borrowed money and suffocating debt service.
Nothing approaching this level of intentional investment in a single country has ever been done. Yes, a similar tranche of greenbacks was burned with no discernible environmental benefit and great economic hardship for all. And yes, the American economy, under the guise of comparative advantage, sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.
Trump’s plan is the opposite of both failed experiments. Like the original Marshall Plan, Trump’s is a recipe for the reindustrialization of the American economy and military, and it is not going to be fueled by windmills and solar farms but with hydrocarbons and uranium. That’s the Trump plan. It has merit.
Yet if we look at the polls, Trump is under water, and his base is showing signs of stress fractures. You bring peace to the Middle East, stop six other wars, and bring in some $20 trillion in America First investments within your first year, and you come home to find yourself under water and called a “lame duck.” Democracies are known to be fickle and hard to please, but this is still rich — and it will result in poverty if it continues.
Without the use of Trump’s tariffs and dealmaking, there would not be $20 trillion looking to onshore in the United States. You can blame Trump for higher costs on bananas and coffee, but it is the cost of electricity and health care — not the cost of coffee and bananas — that is roiling kitchen-table economics.
Vice President JD Vance recently made the right call for popular and populist patience. Those who are impatient should look at the offsets already passed, such as no taxes on Social Security, tips, and overtime. That helps pay for bananas and coffee and then some.
The sovereign wealth funds that are presently lining up on our shores are coming here based on promises made by a can-do president speaking for a can-do nation. While Trump is a can-do guy, are “We the People” still a can-do people? Or do we at least want to return to becoming a can-do people again?
The “can’t-do” forces are legion, and they are the ones now championing the affordability crisis they caused. When America was a can-do nation, we built the Empire State Building in a year. Today, it would take years to get a permit.
RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again
Photo by Jim WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Those willing to invest such money will require some certitude that the power they will need will be there to “build, baby, build.” If not, the money and the opportunity will pass before they have the possibility to take needed root.
And what about us, the American family, worker, and business continuing to struggle under the legacy of throttling energy privation? In short, we all have a common good — a shared interest — in righting the wrongs that control our grid and our nation’s future.
The good news is that a bill was introduced in the House during the government shutdown. It’s called the “Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act.” Unlike Obamacare, which clocked in at 903 pages, this bill is a lean 763 words. If it becomes law — and it should — it would change everything for the better, unlike Obamacare, which is a recipe for unaffordability.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was missing this one thing. His short- and long-term America First ambitions would be significantly strengthened by making this energy bill law before the midterms. Executive orders don’t provide the energy security these investors require or the American people deserve.
$20 trillion is a lot of money. Coming to our shores is a new lease on the American experiment as we enter our 250th birthday, hopelessly divided and broke. Let us come together to solve not just the affordability crisis but also set the conditions for greatness for the next 250 years.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
The real mystery isn’t UFOs — it’s what the government won’t explain
In early 2025, the new Trump administration asked Dr. Steven Greer — founder of the Disclosure Project and a leading figure in the UFO/UAP research community — to write a one-page briefing document to hand directly to the president.
Greer confirms he had been asked to write such a document, had written it, and had been told it was put in the president’s hand.
In the face of the unknown, do we choose hope over fear? Do we choose courage over cowardice?
The following is the text of that memorandum:
From: Steven M. Greer, MD — Director of the Disclosure Project
To: President Donald J. Trump
Re: The UFO/UAP subject
Since the 1950s, the UFO/UAP subject has been handled by a corrupt deep state transnational organization whose power has grown to a level that is an imminent threat to national security and international peace and security.
This organization is a hybrid of unconstitutional deep state and government compartmented operations and corporate special projects.
It has reverse-engineered non-human intelligence (NHI) craft and is operating man-made advanced technologies at parity with NHI technologies. These human technologies are currently being used in a number of criminal operations including assassinations, abductions, human/drug/weapons trafficking, embezzlement of US government funds, acts of treason and have the capacity to simulate a fake alien attack at any moment.
I have debriefed over 700 government and corporate whistleblowers over the past 35 years and have documented their information in the Briefing Document provided to your staff.
The following Executive Orders are urgently needed:
- Explicit whistleblower protection specifying both legal amnesty and personal security.
- An Executive Order authorizing a TS-SCI SAP [top secret, secure communication infrastructure Special Access Program] with significant funding currently configured under law enforcement to stand down these illegal operations and especially the illegal use of electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) currently being used against NHI craft as these actions imperil the future of humanity.
- An Executive Order requiring all UFO/UAP operations to be fully disclosed within 6 months or those responsible will be vigorously prosecuted.
- An Executive Order to authorize an advanced diplomatic team to make peaceful contact with NHI civilizations.
- An Executive Order authorizing the review and release of Advanced Technology (AT) held by this criminal organization that would create total energy independence for the US and would begin a new energy economy with which the US would lead the world economically.
Please feel free to contact me at any time. I am the world’s leading expert on this subject. There is not a distant second. I will provide any assistance, advice and evidence that you and your administration require.
Respectfully yours,
Steven M. Greer, MD
February 9, 2025
According to Greer, this memorandum was put into Trump’s hands, Trump read it, his eyes lit up, and he said, “I want to pursue this.”
And that’s probably where all of us sit with this story. Many allegations have been made, and we can’t tell you what is true. But we know that when a number of claims all point in a similar direction, it should engage your attention.
RELATED: Public will soon be able to invest in ‘advanced or reverse-engineered alien technology’
simonbradfield via iStock/Getty Images
Even the skeptics interviewed for our book, “Catastrophic Disclosure,” including U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), believe that important secrets are being kept from the American public. Perhaps we have accurately depicted what has been hidden for more than 70years. Perhaps we have been fooled by an elaborate series of lies.
In the classic television series “The X-Files,” a common refrain is, “I want to believe.” But it’s not enough to believe or disbelieve in the alien phenomenon. More than anything else, we want to know whether aliens, non-human intelligences, and unidentified aerial phenomena are real — and whether a golden age of scientific miracles is at hand.
Can we cure disease, clean up our planet, feed the hungry, and journey to the stars?
In the face of the unknown, do we choose hope over fear? Do we choose courage over cowardice?
Perhaps we begin by refusing to accept the lies. Perhaps it is by accepting that whatever the facts may be, we know that their full and complete disclosure will not be catastrophic.
We can handle the truth.
Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from Heckenlively and Mazzola’s “Catastrophic Disclosure,” published this week by Post Hill Press.
Trump has the chance to end the welfare free-for-all Minnesota exposed
It’s the $1.2 trillion question.
The United States spends roughly $1.2 trillion every year on means-tested welfare programs — cash aid, food assistance, housing subsidies, and medical care. The list runs through a thicket of acronyms: SNAP, TANF, SSI, EITC, ACTC, WIC, CHIP, ACA subsidies, and CCDBG, plus school meals, Medicaid, and Section 8 housing.
States that eliminate fraud can afford to provide better aid to real residents in need — creating a race to the top in administration rather than a race to exploit Washington.
This guaranteed-income architecture now fuels a destructive cycle. Federal spending drives debt. Debt fuels inflation. Inflation expands dependence. And Washington responds by printing more money and sending it back to the states — without demanding serious accountability.
The result is a bottomless pit of spending, fraud, and inflation, with states handed endless federal funds and almost no incentive to police abuse.
Minnesota’s massive Somali-linked fraud scandal exposes this system in its most grotesque form. The question is whether President Trump will use it to force states to reclaim ownership — and responsibility — over welfare.
The day-care, nutrition, and medical fraud uncovered in Minneapolis is not an aberration. It is the predictable outcome of an open-ended entitlement state. Fraud networks thrive wherever federal money flows without limits or consequences. While the Minneapolis cases involved tight-knit ethnic networks, the underlying problem is national and structural. As long as states do not have to pay their own way, fraud will remain rational behavior.
California offers a parallel example. A report last summer found that roughly one-third of all community college applications in the state were fake — submitted solely to extract federal financial aid. That scam could not survive if California had to pick up the tab.
It isn’t just a blue-state problem, either. As Alex Berenson has reported, Indiana’s Medicaid spending on “autism behavioral therapy” exploded thirtyfold in just six years, reaching $75,000 per child for a few hours a week of unproven playtime therapy. When federal dollars cover the bill, discipline evaporates.
RELATED: Government fraud meets its worst enemy: Some dude with a phone
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Many Americans ask how Minnesota allowed the Feeding Our Future scandal to persist for years. The answer is simple: Washington supplied unlimited money, and the state faced no budgetary consequence for ignoring warning signs.
Over 200 day-care and medical providers allegedly siphoned billions across Medicaid, child care, and nutrition programs. That scale of fraud does not occur without political indifference — or worse.
States have every incentive under this system to look away. Federal money enables a closed loop of special interests, dependency, and electoral protection. Oversight threatens the flow.
Devolving welfare programs to the states — using fixed block grants rather than open-ended federal matches — would cut this dynamic off at the knees. States must balance their budgets. They do not have a printing press. When fraud costs real money, enforcement follows.
This is the moment for Trump to make that case. Either states raise taxes to fund welfare programs themselves, or they reform and prioritize them. That choice restores democratic accountability.
Consider the contrast. The United States spends roughly $1 trillion on national defense — protecting everyone. Yet we now spend even more on means-tested welfare that serves narrower populations while distorting the economy for all. Open-ended welfare spending drives inflation, which then forces more people onto welfare. End the money-printing, and fewer people will need subsidies in the first place.
RELATED: The insane little story that failed to warn America about the depth of Somali fraud
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In response to the Minnesota scandal, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget froze $10 billion in funding for TANF and the Child Care Development Fund across several states. That is a start. But temporary freezes will not survive the next Democrat administration.
The durable fix is statutory restructuring — through budget reconciliation — to force states to assume full financial responsibility for welfare programs. Without unlimited federal backstopping, abuse becomes politically and fiscally intolerable.
Critics warn that block grants spark a “race to the bottom.” The 1996 welfare reform suggests the opposite. When states gained ownership, many innovated — emphasizing work, child-care support, and fraud reduction. Accountability improved because incentives changed.
Yes, benefits should be limited to the truly needy. Open-ended entitlements allowed 250 “meal sites” to appear almost overnight in Minnesota, claiming to feed 120,000 children a day.
Force states to balance their books, and they will treat taxpayer money with respect. States that eliminate fraud can afford to provide better aid to real residents in need — creating a race to the top in administration rather than a race to exploit Washington.
The real way to “feed our future” is to end inflationary money-printing and dismantle the infinite entitlement state — so families can afford food on their own again.
Government fraud meets its worst enemy: Some dude with a phone
Nick Shirley knocked on doors. That was all it took to crack Minnesota’s multibillion-dollar fraud scandal — and expose the failure of the institutions that were supposed to catch it.
Shirley visited Somali-run “businesses” that had received millions in taxpayer funds. His videos showed locked doors, covered windows, and empty buildings where thriving operations were supposed to exist.
When institutions feel threatened, they usually try to personalize the fight. That approach won’t work here.
Within days, the footage racked up more than 100 million views on X alone, triggered a flood of federal scrutiny, and helped force a political reckoning in a state where warnings had gone ignored for years.
Legacy media outlets initially dismissed the story as a “conspiracy theory” — until they couldn’t. Gov. Tim Walz (D) went from defending the programs to demanding crackdowns almost overnight. Federal authorities surged additional personnel and resources into Minnesota. What had been treated as untouchable suddenly became unavoidable.
What happened in Minnesota matters. But what happens next matters more.
You are about to see hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Nick Shirley imitators flood social media. Exposing government waste and fraud is no longer just journalism; it is an incentive structure and a business model.
Independent investigators armed with public records, smartphones, and social platforms will fan out across the country, documenting the gap between what government pays for and what actually exists. And the establishment has no effective way to stop them.
The old playbook no longer works.
When institutions feel threatened, they usually try to personalize the fight. Discredit the messenger. Destroy the movement by targeting its most visible figure. We saw this strategy deployed against the DOGE by turning government efficiency into a culture war about Elon Musk.
That approach won’t work here.
You can’t sue a thousand kids with iPhones. You can’t “fact-check” an empty building that’s supposed to be full of children. Calling something “misinformation” loses its power when the door is locked, the windows are covered, and fraud indictments follow months later.
RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
What’s emerging isn’t a movement with a leader — it’s a decentralized ecosystem. Accountability no longer depends on a single newsroom or institution. It comes from a generation that has figured out that exposing corruption is vastly more rewarding than working a shift at Starbucks.
That should terrify every political leader who has relied on the assumption that no one is really watching.
A single viral video now generates more pressure than a year of congressional hearings. The Minnesota press corps had years to uncover what Shirley documented in an afternoon. They didn’t look — not because the evidence was hidden, but because looking wasn’t incentivized. Now it is.
This shift is part of the reason I created Rhetor, an AI-driven political strategy firm designed to track what people are actually saying and doing in real time. Using these tools, we’ve identified billions of dollars in questionable spending beyond Minnesota.
In New York City, for example, migrant-related spending is projected to reach $4.3 billion through 2027. Audits have flagged contractors billing the city for empty hotel rooms — charging $170 per night while paying hotels closer to $100 and pocketing the difference.
Chicago has paid at least $342 million to staffing firms charging $156 an hour for shelter workers. Illinois spent $2.5 billion in 2025 under emergency rules with minimal oversight.
These are not isolated incidents. They share the same ingredients as Minnesota’s scandal: emergency declarations, suspended procurement rules, inexperienced contractors, and little meaningful oversight.
And someone is going to knock on those doors too.
The old gatekeepers understand what this means — and they’re panicking. For decades, investigative journalism required institutional backing. Stories could be delayed, softened, or killed outright if they threatened the wrong people and interests.
That system is dead.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The new investigative journalism runs on virality, not permission. The reporter is a 23-year-old with a ring light and a Substack. The editorial board is the algorithm. The feedback loop is brutal, immediate, and unforgiving. Get it wrong and the internet will tear you apart. Get it right and the story spreads faster than any newspaper ever could.
This isn’t replacing traditional journalism. It’s filling the void left when traditional journalism stopped doing its job.
Minnesota was the proof of concept. The data was public. The facilities were visitable. The fraud existed for years. Nobody looked — until looking became profitable.
Now it’s profitable everywhere.
The bureaucrats and contractors who built careers on the assumption that no one was watching are about to discover that everyone is. The politicians who treated emergency spending like free money are about to learn that the emergency is over — and the receipts are coming to light.
A generation that treats views like oxygen just learned that fraud is the best clickbait.
Good luck stopping that.
Global warming powered an empire that dwarfed the Vikings
Popular culture loves its image of Norsemen shivering in fur pelts, raiding British monasteries, and braving the icy North Atlantic. Yet while Vikings struggled to survive on the thawing margins of Greenland, a far richer and more formidable maritime power flourished thousands of miles away in the tropical warmth of southern India.
That power was the Chola Empire.
A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
At its height between 985 and 1044 A.D., the Cholas projected force on a scale that made Viking longships look like backyard skirmishers. Their ships were technological marvels — floating fortresses capable of transporting cavalry, infantry, and weeks of provisions across vast distances.
The Cholas mounted a major naval expedition against the Srivijaya Empire, a dominant maritime power based in what is now Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. This was an amphibious assault conducted thousands of miles from home ports, a logistical achievement comparable to modern naval operations. The Cholas toppled rulers, secured the vital Malacca Strait, and guaranteed safe passage for merchant guilds trading from the Middle East to China.
On land, they maintained a standing army that included thousands of war elephants.
Their wealth also found expression in stone. The Great Living Chola Temples — now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites — stretch across southern India and neighboring islands. Built without modern machinery, these monumental structures relied on elephants to haul massive stones from distances of up to 60 miles.
Chola society possessed abundant labor, food, and wealth. The question is why.
What enabled a civilization to generate the immense caloric and economic surplus required to build stone monuments and launch armadas across the Indian Ocean? A large part of the answer lies in climate — specifically, global warming.
The rise of the Chola Empire coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted roughly from 900 to 1300 A.D. This relationship between warmth and human flourishing is inconvenient for the modern climate-industrial narrative, which treats rising temperatures as an unqualified catastrophe.
Warmth strengthens tropical monsoons, the lifeblood of agrarian economies like the Cholas’. Recent scientific research confirms that fluctuations in the Indian summer monsoon shaped agricultural output and the rise and fall of major dynasties. Indian civilization flourished during the Roman Warm Period, fractured during the Dark Ages Cold Period, and reached new heights under the Cholas during the Medieval Warm Period.
The Chola Empire was sustained by the very kind of warming modern activists describe as an “existential threat.”
RELATED: ‘Green Antoinettes’ live large, preach small
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In the Cauvery Delta — the empire’s heartland — this favorable climate transformed the region into the “Rice Bowl of the South.” Three harvests a year became common. Granaries overflowed. Revenues surged.
That surplus freed labor from subsistence farming and redirected it toward imperial ambition. Chola trade guilds thrived, exporting textiles, spices, and grain to the Chinese Song Dynasty — another civilization that prospered during this warm epoch.
Today, we find ourselves in another warming phase, emerging from the depths of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-19th century. Global crop yields have repeatedly reached record highs. India has re-emerged as a major grain exporter. The planet is experiencing a measurable “greening” effect as higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fertilize plants and warmer temperatures expand cultivable land.
Yet, we are told to feel guilty.
Coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that protect humanity from the elements and power modern economies — are vilified. Environmental extremists implicitly argue for a colder world, despite the historical record showing that colder periods brought famine, disease, and social collapse.
The Chola Empire stands as a reminder of what human ingenuity can achieve when the climate cooperates. Its ships sailed on prosperity sustained by warmth. Its temples rose from a society rich in calories and confidence. Its civilization commanded respect across continents.
We face a similar opportunity today. A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule
Democrats bear clear responsibility for Minnesota’s spiraling federal program payment scandal. Either they failed to conduct meaningful oversight of billions in public funds over many years — or they conducted none at all. Their early response to the scandal explains why: They subjected its perpetrators to an unconscionably low standard of scrutiny.
What began as a fraud investigation into federal programs meant to feed poor children has expanded rapidly. During the pandemic, a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future became the centerpiece of what federal prosecutors described as the largest COVID-era fraud scheme, involving roughly $300 million. That scandal soon widened to include fraud in autism services and housing programs. Now investigators allege that day-care centers billed taxpayers for caring for nonexistent children — one facility even displaying signage with a misspelling of “learning.”
No criminal enterprise of this size and duration emerges unless its participants believe they will not face consequences. Democrats let the fraud happen.
As revelations mount, consequences follow. Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz abruptly abandoned his bid for a third term as Minnesota’s governor. Yet nothing suggests the full scope of the scandal has come into view, either geographically or financially.
The estimated cost continues to climb. Last summer, a federal prosecutor put the total at more than $1 billion. Just last month, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson warned the figure could reach $9 billion — and that estimate covers only the schemes already uncovered. As trials proceed, new defendants emerge, and plea deals surface, the total is likely to rise farther.
Instead of demanding answers, Democrats rushed to deflect scrutiny. In Seattle, newly elected mayor and self-described democratic socialist Katie Wilson inserted herself into the controversy by issuing a statement “on the harassment of Somali childcare providers” and posting a hotline number for alleged “hate crime” victims — before any comparable fraud investigation had even begun.
Minnesota Democrats adopted the same playbook. They framed oversight itself as “racism,” attempting to shut down inquiry by exaggeratedly embracing the broader Somali community from which many of the fraudsters came. That rhetorical move does more harm than good. It links an entire community to criminal activity — something Democrats appear not to mind if it shields them politically.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan illustrated the tactic in a video statement delivered while wearing a hijab: “I am incredibly clear that the Somali community is part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota.” Flanagan, notably, is also running for the U.S. Senate in 2026.
The symbolism revealed more than intended. Democrats did not merely treat the Somali community as “part of the fabric” of Minnesota. They treated fraud perpetrators as apart from the fabric — exempt from scrutiny, audits, and accountability.
RELATED: ‘More corrupt than Minnesota’: Trump mocks Newsom after launching California fraud investigation
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Local reporting points to warning signs stretching back more than a decade. Yet Democrats allowed massive federal programs to operate under standards so lax that fraud flourished unchecked.
Despite their rhetoric of inclusion, Democrats effectively segregated oversight itself. They refused to apply basic accountability to billions in taxpayer dollars. At minimum, that constitutes gross incompetence.
The underlying reality is simpler. Democrats let the fraud happen. Whether through neglect or willful blindness, they allowed these programs to operate without serious supervision while evidence of abuse accumulated.
Fraud on this scale does not persist without a sense of impunity. That impunity may have grown gradually through years of nonexistent audits and rubber-stamped claims. Or it may have been reinforced more explicitly. Either way, no criminal enterprise of this size and duration emerges unless its participants believe they will not face consequences.
The precise nature of Democrat culpability remains to be determined. Was it incompetence? A DEI mindset that discouraged scrutiny? Political quid pro quos? Tim Walz’s sudden exit from the governor’s race suggests that the answers may prove damaging.
What is already clear is this: Minnesota’s fraud scandal did not happen in spite of Democratic governance. It happened because of it.
The IRS can hit political violence where it hurts: Funding
Political violence in the United States no longer lives in the realm of theory. We are watching it unfold in real time. Assassination attempts, targeted harassment, and violent disruptions have become disturbingly common. The chaos at Berkeley in November offers a bracing reminder.
A majority of Americans now believe a political candidate will be assassinated within the next five years. We have already witnessed two assassination attempts against President Trump, the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk, and a foiled plot to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Increasingly, this violence draws fuel from activist organizations that exploit tax-exempt status to advance their agendas through intimidation rather than debate.
If the government is serious about de-escalating political violence, it must lawfully deploy every available tool.
That exploitation must end. The federal government already has the tools to act. It should use them — starting with the IRS.
We cannot tolerate nonprofits mobilizing radicals under the banner of free speech while trampling the First Amendment rights of others. At Berkeley, activist groups operated as coordinated foot soldiers. One organization, “By Any Means Necessary,” lived up to its name. Protesters circulated flyers depicting Charlie Kirk’s assassination, labeled attendees “fascists,” and openly called for President Trump’s removal.
This is not debate. It is coercion.
Growing numbers of activists no longer seek persuasion but submission. Polling reflects the danger. Roughly one-third of Americans under 45 now say political violence is sometimes justified. Berkeley showed what that belief looks like when put into practice.
The moment demands a firm, whole-of-government response. As a former state criminal prosecutor and Senate chief of staff, I understand that crises require decisive action. Protecting citizens and enforcing the law are core functions of government. The time to act has arrived.
The first step toward dismantling the nonprofit infrastructure that enables political violence is straightforward: The IRS should revoke tax-exempt status from organizations that finance or coordinate violent activity. Cutting off these funding streams deprives radical networks of oxygen.
Critics will claim this amounts to political targeting. That claim collapses under scrutiny.
RELATED: Trump declared war on leftist domestic terror. The IRS didn’t get the memo.
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The real problem is that the IRS has lost focus. For years, the agency engaged in overt political targeting — scrutinizing conservative groups while leaving ideologically aligned organizations untouched. That imbalance allowed certain nonprofits to operate with near impunity while exploiting the protections of tax-exempt status.
Restoring evenhanded enforcement does not mean ignoring violations on the left. It means applying the law as written. The IRS has both the authority and the obligation to act when nonprofits facilitate violence. Looking the other way is not neutrality. It is abdication.
Consider Antifa, which has been designated a domestic terrorist organization yet continues to benefit indirectly from nonprofit support structures. That contradiction should not stand.
If the government is serious about de-escalating political violence, it must lawfully deploy every available tool. That includes the IRS. The assassination attempts against President Trump should have been a wake-up call. The murder of Charlie Kirk should have erased any remaining illusions.
Subversive actors are gaming the nonprofit system to tear the country apart — using tax-exempt dollars to silence, intimidate, and physically endanger those exercising their most basic constitutional rights.
We either enforce the law now, or we accept that the violence will escalate.
Trump is right: Netflix’s merger would create a woke media monster
Popular entertainment has always shaped the public mind in ways politicians can only envy.
Percy Bysshe Shelley once called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The idea surfaces memorably in the 1984 Best Picture winner “Amadeus,” where Emperor Joseph II appears more invested in micromanaging Vienna’s opera scene than governing his empire.
Modern technology has magnified that cultural power. Today, many young Americans absorb more of their moral instruction from Netflix than from teachers, pastors, or even parents.
Now Netflix wants to expand that influence dramatically by acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, a media conglomerate that includes HBO, DC Studios, and franchises such as “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones.” The combined entity would control roughly a third of the streaming market and wield unprecedented cultural power.
Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.
The scale of the proposed merger raised concerns even for President Donald Trump, who warned last month that it “could be a problem” and confirmed his administration would take an active role in reviewing the deal.
Given the stakes, the question is not abstract. How does Netflix use the power it already holds?
Consider the company’s recent headline-grabbing film, “Queen of Coal,” described as the story of “a trans woman who dreams of working the coal mines” and must battle a town defined by “superstition and patriarchy.”
Inspiring stuff.
Or recall Netflix’s 2020 release of “Cuties,” a French film centered on 11-year-old girls twerking. The filmmakers claimed the movie criticized the sexualization of children. Perhaps that was their intent. Netflix’s marketing department missed the point entirely, replacing the original poster with one featuring preteen actresses in sexualized poses. Public outrage followed, and Netflix eventually apologized.
After George Floyd’s death in 2020, Netflix declared on social media, “To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter,” and then set about race-swapping characters across its catalog.
Zoom out further. A report by Concerned Women for America found that nearly half of Netflix’s children’s programming pushes LGBT themes.
Taken together, the pattern is unmistakable. Netflix uses its platform to advance a radical progressive agenda, and scrutiny only confirms it.
The company’s internal culture reinforces the point. Even by Big Tech standards, Netflix skews sharply left. In 2020, 98% of its political donations went to Democrats, compared with 84% at Apple and 77% at Facebook.
CEO Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and longtime chief executive, donated $7 million in 2024 to a pro-Kamala Harris super PAC and $2 million to California’s redistricting effort last year. In 2017, Hastings told fellow billionaire Peter Thiel that his support for Trump reflected such “catastrophically bad judgment” that it called into question Thiel’s fitness to remain on Facebook’s board.
Hastings has made clear that conservative ideas do not merely deserve debate. In his view, they disqualify those who hold them from serious consideration.
Then comes the revolving door between Netflix and Democratic power.
RELATED: Netflix wants a monopoly on your mind
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In 2018, Netflix signed a deal with former President Barack Obama reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. The results included a slate of progressive documentaries and an apocalypse thriller featuring the line, “Trust should not be doled out easily, especially to white people” — a sentiment both racist and badly written.
Susan Rice offers another example. After serving as Obama’s U.N. ambassador and national security adviser, she joined Netflix’s board during Trump’s first term, left to lead Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, and has now returned to the company.
Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.
President Trump has signaled that he understands what is at stake. He has warned that the $82.7 billion deal must undergo rigorous antitrust scrutiny.
As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted, the merged company would exceed the 30% market-share threshold traditionally viewed as “presumptively problematic” under antitrust law.
But Trump’s concern goes deeper. As an entertainer himself, he grasps the importance of the arts. That understanding explains his hands-on approach to reforming the previously ultra-woke Kennedy Center. It explains his plan to commission 250 classical sculptures for a National Garden of American Heroes. It explains his appointment of Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to Hollywood.
And it explains why he should not allow Netflix to build a woke media monopoly capable of doing more long-term damage to the country than any single election cycle.
What investigators still haven’t asked about Minnesota’s fraud
The national spotlight has settled on the industrial-scale fraud uncovered in Minnesota, much of it linked to networks operating within the state’s Somali immigrant community. To date, coverage has focused on how operators allegedly diverted nearly $9 billion in public funds into shell businesses that existed largely to funnel money to friends and family through no-show jobs and inflated contracts.
That story matters. But it may not be the whole story.
Fraud at this scale almost never stands alone. Where investigators uncover massive deception, additional crimes often lie beneath the surface.
Most of the businesses implicated in the scheme presented themselves as child-care centers, autism service providers, and non-emergency medical transport companies. For readers unfamiliar with immigration enforcement, the reaction is straightforward: Criminals stole money intended for society’s most vulnerable.
For those who have spent decades working in immigration law and border security, a different question arises. Why build an end-to-end infrastructure of licensed service providers unless it served additional purposes?
Videos circulating online show many of these facilities sitting empty — unused day-cares, idle transport vans, and vacant offices. That does not prove the businesses were harmless.
In criminal investigations, fraud rarely exists in isolation. One axiom holds that following the money reveals the perpetrators. A second, less discussed rule also applies: Following the money backward often reveals additional crimes.
Illegal immigration provides a perfect example. The initial violation occurs when an alien enters unlawfully or makes false asylum claims. Additional offenses frequently follow: identity theft, illegal employment, fraudulent tax filings, and payments to smugglers to bring in relatives. Organized crime and terrorist groups have used similar layered fraud models for decades. Illicit revenue becomes seed money for broader criminal activity.
Despite the scale of the Minnesota fraud, little public attention has focused on whether these businesses were used for more than financial theft. There appears to be no comprehensive inquiry into whether any of the entities sponsored employment-based visas, concealed smuggled minors, facilitated labor trafficking, or enabled sex trafficking.
None of those allegations has been proven. But the structure of the alleged scheme bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the network of Health and Human Services contractors through which the Biden administration lost track of thousands of unaccompanied alien children.
According to a City Journal investigation, federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions of dollars from the Minnesota fraud flowed back to Somalia, where funds ultimately reached al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization. The report described Minnesota taxpayers as the group’s largest single funding source.
RELATED: Minnesota’s fraud scandal exposes a dangerously loose election system
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If accurate, that finding raises a far more serious concern. Terrorist organizations do not stop at cash transfers when operational infrastructure is available. A network of licensed service providers — child-care centers, transportation companies, and health services — offers precisely the kind of cover such groups seek to move people, materials, and money discreetly inside the United States.
The full extent of al-Shabaab’s involvement remains unclear. Covert operations rarely reveal themselves all at once. They are built deliberately, in stages, with long timelines. Minnesota records suggest (and the explosion in Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s personal wealth seems to indicate) that much of the large-scale fraud linked to Somali-run entities accelerated over the past decade. That timeline raises the possibility that the scheme was still maturing when investigators uncovered it.
If so, authorities may have disrupted a funding and logistics pipeline before all layers of criminal activity were fully deployed.
One point remains undeniable: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Fraud at this scale almost never stands alone. Where investigators uncover massive deception, additional crimes often lie beneath the surface.
Federal authorities should pursue this case to its roots. That means examining every entity, every financial flow, and every operational link — not just to recover stolen funds, but to determine what else those structures were built to conceal.
