Category: The Washington Free Beacon
What’s in Trump’s new national security strategy?
Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & NatSec newsletter {beacon} Defense &National Security Defense &National Security The Big Story What’s in Trump’s new national security strategy? President Trump has released his national security strategy (NSS) with a focus on building up a larger military presence in the Western Hemisphere, balancing global trade, tightening up border…
RFK’s alleged sexting partner splits with another publication amid scandal-ridden book release
Olivia Nuzzi’s fall from grace continues as she parts ways with another magazine.
Once a rising star in the journalism world, Nuzzi was first fired from the New Yorker in 2024 after news broke of her alleged sexting with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., breaking the most basic forms of journalistic ethics and collapsing her engagement to then-Politico reporter Ryan Lizza. Nuzzi was later picked up by Vanity Fair to be West Coast editor.
The overlapping narratives inevitably caused a media firestorm.
Nearly a year later, the scandal has resurfaced after Nuzzi announced the release of her book “American Canto,” which apparently details her alleged behavior with Kennedy but refers to him only as “the politician.”
In the aftermath of the renewed interest in and attention to the scandal, Nuzzi and Vanity Fair “have agreed to part ways,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
RELATED: Trump calls New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi an ‘unattractive wack job’
Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for HBO
Nuzzi’s attempt at a comeback tour was met with a series of bombshell exposés written by her former fiancé, who began his career as an independent journalist following the scandal.
Lizza detailed in his Substack series how he found out about Nuzzi’s alleged sexting not just with Kennedy in 2024, but also with former presidential candidate Mark Sanford in 2020. Lizza went on to detail a toxic dynamic between Nuzzi and Kennedy, including graphic details about their sexual proclivities and the intense betrayal, while she insisted that the relationship was merely a “digital” one.
Despite the overwhelming evidence and multiple accounts of the behavior, Kennedy has denied the allegations.
RELATED: What the mainstream media’s outrage over RFK Jr.’s ‘affair’ is REALLY about
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The overlapping narratives inevitably caused a media firestorm, but it may not have translated into monetary success for Nuzzi’s new book.
Since its release on December 2, “American Canto” sat at No. 5,546 on Amazon’s best-seller list and at No. 3,059 in the Kindle store. Despite the onslaught of media attention, the supposedly “mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade” is currently sitting at a brutal 1.69-star rating on Goodreads.
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A Dem House Candidate Mandated the COVID Vaccine for County Employees—Then Gave Them Taxpayer-Funded Gift Cards as a Reward for Getting the Jab
Bucks County, Pa., commissioner Bob Harvie (D.), who is running to unseat Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), required 2,300 county employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine or lose their jobs during the pandemic. He then spent more than $115,000 in taxpayer funds on gift cards that rewarded staff who got the mandatory jab.
The post A Dem House Candidate Mandated the COVID Vaccine for County Employees—Then Gave Them Taxpayer-Funded Gift Cards as a Reward for Getting the Jab appeared first on .
Washington’s new favorite lie: ‘Most migrants are safe’
If anyone from a backward and unstable country could be vetted for anti-American hostility, it would have been someone like Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Afghan national who allegedly shot two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., the day before Thanksgiving. He had been vetted by the CIA, worked with our military in Afghanistan, and was later approved for asylum alongside his wife and five children.
And still, he turned his gun on the very country that took him in. How many more reminders do we need before we shut off the spigot?
Tackling America’s economic challenges will be tricky. But an immigration shutoff is easy. Trump can — with the stroke of a pen — halt all entries that threaten national security.
In response to the attack, President Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all third world countries.” Many Americans hoped this meant fulfilling the pledge he made nearly a decade ago: “A total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
On Thanksgiving Day, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow announced a “full-scale, rigorous reexamination of every green card” holder from “every country of concern.” When pressed, Edlow pointed to the 19 countries listed in Trump’s June 4 proclamation, “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.”
That June order established two tiers of restrictions.
Full restriction: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen.
Partial restriction: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela.
This week, the White House announced its intention to pause all immigration from all 19 countries and freeze naturalization applications from nationals already here.
It’s a start. But it doesn’t address the larger reality: Even a total shutdown of these 19 countries barely dents the scale of Islamic-world migration into the United States.
By my calculations, these countries account for only 27% of Muslim-origin immigration in 2023 — and just 18% of our intake from the Islamic world over the past decade.
Ten of the 19 targeted countries are majority-Muslim. But there are 39 other majority-Muslim countries — most overwhelmingly Muslim — from which we admit well over 100,000 green-card recipients each year.
Here is the updated breakdown of immigration from all majority-Muslim countries in 2023 and over the prior 10 years:
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This is a numbers game. You simply cannot import roughly 175,000 Muslim migrants every year — not counting tens of thousands more on student and temporary visas — without replicating the social unraveling we have seen in Europe.
Trump’s expanded ban would block about 47,000 of these arrivals annually. But it leaves massive sending countries — Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Uzbekistan — effectively untouched.
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The problem with limiting the moratorium to these 10 Islamic countries (plus nine other hostile or unstable states) isn’t just numerical. It’s philosophical. The order implies that we are only concerned with countries that have poor diplomatic relations or inadequate data-sharing with the United States.
But the challenge of Islamic migration has never been solely about vetting. Most individuals who embrace Sharia supremacism, support suicide attacks, or reject Western norms are not sworn members of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah. The issue is ideological — a form of unreformed Islam that never passed through the Enlightenment and remains fundamentally incompatible with liberal Western society.
For decades, small-scale migration masked this reality. But we have admitted roughly 3 million Muslims since 9/11. They cluster, build Qatari-funded or Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated mosques, and reproduce the same ideological ecosystem from which they emigrated. High-volume flows reinforce the problem exponentially.
And contrary to the foreign-policy establishment’s assumptions, hostility does not only come from “enemy” states. In fact, migrants from “friendly” governments often pose greater risks. Regimes such as Egypt and Jordan suppress their own Islamist movements. Uzbekistan bans full beards. These governments contain radicalism at home — and we import the very people they fear.
We’ve seen the consequences repeatedly. A sampling:
- Akayed Ullah, who arrived from Bangladesh in 2011, detonated a pipe bomb in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, declaring support for ISIS. Bangladesh now sends more than 18,000 immigrants annually.
- Sayfullo Saipov, who came from Uzbekistan in 2010 on a diversity visa, murdered eight people in a truck attack in Manhattan while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
- Dilkhayot Kasimov, Abdurasul Juraboev, Abror Habibov, all Uzbeks, conspired to support ISIS, discussed attacking President Obama, and scouted U.S. military targets. We continue admitting over 5,000 Uzbeks per year through the Diversity Visa Lottery — a program Trump should end immediately.
- Muhammad Khair Alabid, a student from Egypt, plotted a Fourth of July vehicle-bomb attack in Cleveland.
- Mohamed Sabry Soliman, also from Egypt, firebombed a pro-Israel rally in Boulder in 2025, killing one and injuring 12. He and his family were admitted by the Biden administration and overstayed. We have issued more than 100,000 green cards to Egyptian nationals in the past decade.
- Muhammad El-Sayed, admitted from Jordan on a diversity visa, built an ISIS-linked terror cell in Minneapolis, scouting military bases and Jewish centers.
- Abdullah Muhammad Zain-ul-Abideen, a student visa-holder from Jordan, provided material support in the Garland, Texas, terrorist attack on the “Draw Muhammad” event.
Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for BAFTA
The most glaring case of false security is Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a Saudi military trainee brought here on an A-2 visa. In 2019, he murdered three American service members at Naval Air Station Pensacola. He was here because our government trusted Saudi vetting.
This is the pattern: Working with a regime is not the same as trusting its people. In many cases, these governments fear their own populations. Yet we continue importing those populations at scale.
For example: The United States and Israel prop up the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan precisely because its people are more radical than their rulers. Yet we have brought in over 72,000 Jordanians in the past decade. If those populations are too dangerous for their own government, why do we assume they are safe for ours?
When it comes to transformational immigration policy, there is no such thing as “lukewarm hell.” Trump should impose a full moratorium on all Islamic-majority countries and abolish the Diversity Visa Lottery entirely.
Tackling America’s economic challenges ahead of the midterms will be tricky. But an immigration shutoff is easy. Under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, Trump can — with the stroke of a pen — halt all entries that threaten national security.
He has already done it for 19 countries. He has no reason not to finish the job.
Tim Walz tries gaslighting Americans again — this time about Trump’s ‘garbage’ remark
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appears keen to clutch pearls and hold President Donald Trump to a different standard than Walz did the previous president — especially after Trump called Walz “seriously retarded.”
Quick background
During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump leaned into his criticism of Somalia, the rampant fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, and Somalia’s top spokeswoman in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
‘This is on top of all the other vile comments.’
“Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure,” said the president.
Somalia is a Sunni Muslim nation on the easternmost part of Africa with a population of just over 19 million, a high rate of female genital mutilation, a GDP of $12.94 billion, and an adult literacy rate of 54%.
The country is a haven for crime and terrorism, ranking 34th out of 193 countries for criminality on the Global Organized Crime Index. With 10 being the most severe, Somalia scores 8.5 for human trafficking; 8 for human smuggling; 9.5 for extortion and protection racketeering; 9 for arms trafficking; 7 for financial crimes; and 7 for trade in counterfeit goods.
Trump appears to suspect that America imported some of Somalia’s chronic problems when accepting its refugees.
Following a report detailing instances of alleged and confirmed fraud perpetrated by numerous members of the Somali community in Minnesota, Trump announced on Nov. 21 that he was terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia.
RELATED: DHS to increase operations in Twin Cities region as Somali fraud becomes unignorable
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions every year. Billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88%. They contribute nothing,” continued Trump. “I don’t want them in our country; I’ll be honest with you. Some might say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too.”
Trump added, “We’re at a tipping point. I don’t know if people mind me saying that, but I’m saying it. We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
“Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work,” Trump said, leaving no room for ambiguity.
“These are people who do nothing but complain.”
Walz whines, gaslights
Walz made a big show on Thursday of denouncing Trump’s remarks and calling on others to do likewise.
“Donald Trump’s calling our Somali neighbors ‘garbage’ and the state of Minnesota a ‘hellhole’ is, I’m assuming, is unprecedented for a United States president,” said Walz, who has bent the truth to his benefit on numerous occasions.
The use of the term “garbage” by an American president in reference to a group of people is not unprecedented. In fact, Walz downplayed former President Joe Biden’s use of the term to describe nearly half the country just last year.
When stumping for then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October 2024, Biden fixated on a joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe about Puerto Rico during a humorous speech at a Trump rally in New York City — a rally that Walz had likened to a Nazi rally. Rather than brush off the joke, Biden apparently tried to outdo Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” smear.
“A speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something,” said Biden. “In my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
After Biden suggested that the over 77.3 million who would ultimately vote for Trump were “garbage,” Walz downplayed the remark when asked in a “CBS Mornings” interview whether that comment and others like it undercut the Democratic campaign’s “closing message of unity.”
“No, certainly not,” said Walz. “I think that the frustration we’ve seen since January 6, the frustration with Donald Trump’s rhetoric of division, it does fire passions.”
After suggesting on Thursday that Trump’s “garbage” remark was a first, Walz, a champion of racist DEI initiatives, said that “demonizing an entire group of people by their race and their ethnicity — a very group of people who contribute to the vitality, economic [sic], culture of this state is something I was hoping we’d never have to see. This is on top of all the other vile comments.”
The Democratic governor said that any officials in Minnesota who would not condemn Trump’s “vile attack” are “complicit in it.”
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