Category: The Washington Free Beacon
United States Seizes Two Venezuela-Linked Oil Tankers, Including One Escorted by Russian Navy
U.S. forces on Wednesday seized two oil tankers linked to Venezuela in coordinated operations in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, including one vessel that was traveling under escort from Russian naval ships, according to U.S. officials.
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California Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Steyer Funds Pro-Hamas Group That Calls Cops ‘Pigs’
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist running for California governor, bankrolls a left-wing nonprofit that refers to police officers as “pigs” and has spouted anti-Semitic tropes in defense of Hamas.
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The Spectacle Ep. 311: Venezuela: Enemies Foreign and Domestic, Part I
2026 is off to an explosive start, with President Trump’s arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. (READ MORE: The Toppling…
Trump Admin Withdrawing From ‘Anti-American’ Global Climate Change Regimes
‘Wasteful international organizations’
Yes, ICE Agents Can Defend Themselves From People Using Cars As Murder Weapons
Vehicles are deadly weapons, and crazed lunatics using them that way should expect a proportionate response.
‘Without citing evidence’: NYT steps on a rake trying to attack Trump administration over fraud crackdown
The Department of Health and Human Services cut off five Democrat-run states’ access to over $10 billion in federal child care and family assistance funds on Tuesday, citing “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.”
The New York Times joined Democrats in criticizing the Trump administration’s anti-fraud campaign — but bungled its execution.
The Times’ Minho Kim opened his Tuesday piece with the following sentence:
The Trump administration plans to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care subsidies, social services and cash support for low-income families in five states controlled by Democrats, claiming widespread fraud throughout those states, without citing evidence, after a major welfare fraud scheme in one of them.
The sentence was later rearranged without an editor’s note but without any significant alterations.
‘The first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side.’
It was not lost on critics that immediately after asserting that the administration claimed widespread fraud “without citing evidence,” Kim himself proceeded to allude to the damning evidence of widespread fraud in one of the states facing the funding pause — fraud that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged on Monday when giving up on his ambition of re-election.
Drew Holden, the managing editor at American Compass, suggested that the New York Times perhaps “got so used to saying that the Trump admin did something ‘without citing evidence’ that they didn’t realize they mention the ‘evidence’ in the same sentence.”
Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Later in the Times article, Kim acknowledged that the funding freeze builds on the HHS’ pause of $185 million in annual childcare funds in the wake of credible allegations of massive fraud in taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities in the Gopher State.
Minnesota has been home to historic fraud committed by members of the Somali community in relation to coronavirus relief funding and allegedly in relation to taxpayer-subsidized day care facilities. The COVID scams in Minnesota have resulted in dozens of criminal convictions and scores of indictments in recent years. Government officials are working to ensure similar graft is not impacting other jurisdictions.
Following the publication of Kim’s piece, American Enterprise Institute fellow Ruy Teixeira stressed that “the first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side for attacking them and wave the bloody shirt of racism against President Trump but rather to stress the seriousness of the problem and how it will not be tolerated.”
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Creep state: Corgan claims feds helped sideline rock
Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan says he was approached by government entities during the George W. Bush administration.
According to the singer, he is familiar with several instances of musicians being compromised and protected by the industry due to their willingness to play ball.
‘I’ve been approached by elements of the US government.’
The Smashing Pumpkins were among the most popular bands in the 1990s, with three records achieving at least platinum-selling status and 1995’s “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” reaching diamond status.
Now, among other ventures, Corgan hosts “The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan” podcast and recently had writer Conrad Flynn as his guest. The pair discussed dark influences in Hollywood culture, which led Corgan to reveal that he himself had been approached by the government in past decades.
Siamese scheme
“At different times, I’ve been approached by elements of the U.S. government to be involved in things that were just way above my pay grade,” he explained. “I’ve never talked about them in any depth publicly, but I’ve had experiences where I would find myself in a room with people and think, ‘Why are they talking to me?’ It was something out of, like, ‘Eyes Wide Shut,'” Corgan said, referring to the movie about the occult.
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Corgan explained that his experiences led to interactions with government officials hoping to capitalize on his influence.
“All I can say is I’ve experienced supernatural things and I’ve experienced things where I’ve had elements of the U.S. government reach out to me because they somehow want to hook my influence, which is not that great, into whatever they’re after.”
Chart of the deal
This led the singer to speak on the music industry, which is “certainly [his] area of expertise,” while adding the notion that “there are elements in popular music where people have been compromised, knowingly.”
“They were offered kind of a Faustian bargain. Pick door No .1 and we’re going to push you to the moon. … There are people who are protected, and they get every benefit of that protection, and I know it because I know the game, because I’ve lived it. And there are other people where they just, they decide to press a button and throw them off the ship.”
Some of these musicians may have been dumped for bad behavior, Corgan admitted, but in “other cases,” he said, it was likely because “they won’t do the bidding that people want them to do.”
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Photo by Catherine McGann/Getty Images
Disarmed
The culmination of political influence on music — particularly rock music — resulted in the severe lack of edgy rock artists since the turn of the millennium.
“Here we are 25 years into the 21st century, and rock couldn’t be less of an influence on the on the social political order,” Corgan continued, noting how influential the genre was in the second half of the 1900s.
“Does anybody think that that’s kind of strange? That somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don’t say certain things any more?”
Corgan soon cut the conversation short, telling his guest he was not willing to directly state what he was asked and by whom.
Texas Squashes Left-Wing American Bar Association’s Monopoly On Law School Accreditation
Texas officially terminated the left-wing American Bar Association’s (ABA) oversight of its law schools on Tuesday, making it the first state in the nation to do so. In a two-page order, the Texas Supreme Court approved amendments it proposed in late September 2025, which effectively declared “that the ABA should no longer have the final […]
