The Democrat party appears determined to spend the next 40 years wandering in the wilderness. There have been no fruitful reflections leading to productive responses to the drubbing Democrats took in the 2024 national elections. The few Cassandras who think some change in course is required are considered by Democrat elitists to be dinosaurs worthy of disdain.
Progressivism has gone down its endless path far enough so that the worldview is post-reality. Progressivism has long since left classical liberalism in the rear-view mirror. Many of their policies today (e.g. killing pre-born babies, protecting criminal illegal aliens, facilitating fentanyl supply with open borders, inflicting irreversible reproductive damage on minors, disregard of monetary inflation that ravages the poor and middle class) are downright evil. As such, it is incompatible with common sense and antithetical to normality. Progressives cannot embrace western civilization, much less explicitly celebrate the Christian worldview.
Obama has been the power behind the curtain running the DNC since he was President. As a result, progressive fascists occupy all important positions. The party cannot turn back. This means Democrats openly espousing their party’s positions will be less and less popular in the polls. Elections likely will become even more polarized with national polls trending Red as voters awaken.
Message refinement, lying, dissembling, distortion, misrepresentation, and projection are the recourses open to Democrats. Having sparse rational arguments for their policies, ad hominem attacks will continue with emotional appeals. Democrats will represent themselves as angels of light, but they are deceivers. Once in power, they will revert to form and turn hard Left.
To continue legislative successes, any successor to Trump must continue putting American interests first. The working-class poor and middle class must be protected from monetary inflation by requiring balanced budgets (with an exception for congressionally declared war). A much smaller government is required. Finally, there must be greater respect for our Bill of Rights to prevent government trampling again.
How did Trump succeed electorally? He appealed to Americans’ common sense and their own self interests (i.e. themselves, their families, their communities). Once elected, as he did before, he is doing what he said he was going to do, which thrills his constituency.
In 2024, Trump was the ultimate outsider even though he had been President. He campaigned against the interests of the Republican Establishment and the Uniparty which was in control of the Republican party. Trump could run against the Establishment and the Uniparty because they were just about as far down the progressive path as the Democrats. Voters, remembering that Trump was about the only politician they could name who would do what he said he would do, resoundingly endorsed him for the party nomination. Trump brought a revolution to the Republican party, changing its policies, priorities, and people.
With the replacement of Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair, Trump firmly controls the Republican party machine. Subscribing to the political philosophy of “Me, too, but a little bit less,” the Uniparty drifted further away from common sense and solutions helping common and normal people. This ultimately opened the door for Trump to walk right in.
No such revolution can happen in the Democrat party. If any candidate embraces America First policies in favor of criminal justice, the economy, energy, immigration control, balanced budgets, ending chemical and surgical mutilation of children, protecting women’s spaces from men pretending to be women, ending the war on masculinity, respecting the Bill of Rights, and sensible taxes, then the Democrat elites, with their hands on the power levers in the party, will invite the apostate to join Republicans or go Independent. This suggests Dems can’t get to there from here.
Just as it took a single individual, Donald Trump, who could relate to his base and continually grow it to overthrow his own party, the same would need to happen to Democrats. There has to be leadership from the top. Ah, but there’s the rub. Democrat machinery is all about lockstep compliance. As RFK, Jr. found, there’s no room even for a primary insurgency to get started. While there’s an argument to be made that not all Democrats are progressive fascists, and so the party can still be redeemed, the likelihood that any Democrat currently espousing classical liberalism can gain a toehold politically is nil.
It’s the Republicans’ game to lose. And they’ll surely accomplish this by corruption or fecklessness. This is the only way Democrats will gain power again. Corruption isn’t just of the Biden Crime Family variety. It includes influence peddling and money laundering through art sales and charities. It includes nepotism and favoritism. But it also includes legislation providing perks and immunities to politicians and bureaucrats separating them from the little people which will inevitably produce backlash.
Fecklessness involves malgovernance. Additionally, it includes lack of empathy for families ruined by dependency on government. Perhaps foremost, there is no empathy for the effect of government-produced monetary inflation through deficit spending on the poor and middle classes. Therefore, it neglects frugal appropriations and administrative incompetence. Diligently exercising governmental agency oversight is required to hold bureaucracies accountable, preventing undue growth of Leviathan and its Deep State.
The issue of fecklessness raises the specter of elected Republicans’ participation in the Uniparty. Neither the Lugenpresse nor the alternative media have acknowledged Uniparty reign from 2022-2024 led by Republican fiscal acquiescence to Ever Bigger Government budgets. Despite having unilateral power of the purse, House Republicans took no fiscal actions to achieve smaller government.
For the last two years, almost all congressional Republicans voted for all the line items of waste, fraud, and abuse that DOGE has discovered and will yet uncover. Fiscal conservatives were rare, and their appropriations advice ignored by almost all their Republican colleagues. Otherwise, it took Edward Snowden to tell us our government was illegally and unconstitutionally spying on American citizens. Not a single elected Republican had raised a peep. This is unsurprising, since Republicans subsequently passed unconstitutional warrantless spying on Americans.
Currently, the Uniparty fears the Trump juggernaut, so elected Republican opposition to Trump’s agenda has vaporized. The Uniparty, like Democrats, thinks all this is a passing political fad and they can wait this out. Uniparty Republicans are afraid of standing in Trump’s way now, but they are patiently waiting to backslide. One by one, voters need to get rid of pretenders and elect true conservatives who love their families, country, and God.
Freedom of speech is central to getting the truth and to getting the truth out. X (formerly Twitter) has been a political and media game changer acting as the free speech 400-pound gorilla. Of late, Facebook and Instagram have decided to join the parade. These platforms, comprised of multitudes of bright individuals providing instantaneous communication, will continue eroding public trust in the Lugenpresse and its progressive propaganda.
God forms the light and creates darkness. He brings prosperity and creates disasters. The Lord does all these things. With God’s blessing, the U.S. will enter a glorious new era of liberty and prosperity. Pray that elected Republicans will feel the courage of their conservative convictions expressed on the campaign trail.
DOGE Uncovers $2B Taxpayer Windfall For Stacey Abrams-Linked Nonprofit
DOGE discovered $2 billion in taxpayer funds set aside for a fledgling nonprofit linked to perennial Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. [emphasis, links added]
Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant even though it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant’s dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings.
Power Forward Communities’ grant was one of just eight Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that the EPA doled out in April 2024, totaling $20 billion.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Feb. 13 that his staff and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials discovered that the Biden administration parked that same $20 billion at an outside financial institution before leaving office, limiting the federal government’s oversight of the program.
The revelation that Power Forward Communities is among the beneficiaries of the funds Zeldin’s team located raises ethics questions about how the Biden administration selected recipients of such massive grants and whether it played favorites when doling those grants out. [more]
How Did Stacey Abrams Multiply Her Net Worth In Just A Few Years?
Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has become a millionaire.
Abrams is worth $3.17 million, according to the state disclosures she filed in March, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. When she first ran for the Georgia governorship in 2018, Abrams was dealing with a “hefty bill from the IRS” and was worth only $109,000, the outlet noted.
The “hefty” tax bill from the IRS was $54,000, with a further $410,000 in liabilities, according to Fox News. She owed $96,000 in student loan debt and $83,000 in credit card debt, AP reported. [more]
We do not live in an entirely peaceful or civilized world. Conservatives realize that fact and wish to prepare for the worst by strengthening our military, shoring up the value of our currency, and ensuring economic prosperity. In contrast, liberals live in a fantasy land, in which everyone is presumed to be “nice” and no other nation wishes to harm us.
Among those liberals is Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015) and other books. Harari, who stated that all of the world’s great religions are mere “stories invented by our ancestors,” puts his faith in global “cooperation” and sees the possibility of a New Eden with no war, no poverty, and no prejudice. What he fails to realize is that the “new Eden” of globalists (socialists and communists) is the most ridiculous “story” of all, and the most discredited.
It’s nice to believe that human nature has changed and that, just because we have not had a global war for 80 years, we will not have one in the future, ever. But human nature has not changed. The question is how we respond to the realities of war, genocide, and economic depression — and how we prepare for them.
Liberals — and I would include Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — respond to the world’s evil by turning away and doing nothing. The 52 Americans who were seized in November, 1979, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran should never have been taken hostage in the first place. When they were, there should have been something more than the aborted operation of April 1980, to free them. After that failure, the Carter administration sat on its hands for another nine months until the hostages were released on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, presumably because they knew Reagan would not dither.
During the 1990s, President Clinton reportedly allowed the transfer of sensitive technology to China in return for millions in illicit campaign contributions, transferred through suspect Chinese-American donors. He allowed China to overtake one industry after another, from shoes and clothing to pharmaceuticals and electronics.
A common argument was that, once its people had a taste of Western prosperity, China would renounce its totalitarian posture and behave in a civilized manner. Anyone who has studied China’s militarism, its technological theft, and its internal repression of minority and religious groups knows that this is not the case. Clinton was just as naïve as any other liberal.
Obama and Biden continued with this fantasy, doing little if anything to counter China’s ambitious global expansion. During Obama’s second term, military spending fell by a cumulative 15%. Equally bad, Biden allowed our military spending to decline for four years in a row relative to inflation, while China and other adversaries increased theirs.
No one wishes to see another war, but the way to avoid it is not to close your eyes and hope it doesn’t happen. The only way to prevent another global war is for the U.S. to maintain a decisive advantage over our adversaries, something we lost under Obama and Biden. Fortunately, President Trump understands this reality and has proposed a $58-billion increase in defense spending along with increases in NATO and Japanese spending on defense. Trump would not just throw more money at the problem, but would cut waste and abuse, making our military more fitting it, at the same time that he focuses on cybersecurity, space forces, and nuclear defense (an “Iron Dome” for America).
Whether it is defense, inflation, immigration, fentanyl importation, or violent crime, liberals take a “soft” approach that turns its back on the problem and fails to protect us from harm. Liberals do not even admit that radical Islam is a problem — like Obama and Biden, they refuse to utter the words “Islamic terrorism” — just as they refused to admit there was a “crisis” at our southern border.
The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it exists. Liberals seem to think mankind has outgrown its evil tendencies and that “cooperation” with countries like Iran is possible. Iran appears to be only weeks or months away from the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb. President Trump may indeed strike a deal with Tehran, but it will be on our terms: as he said recently, the problem of a nuclear-armed Iran can be settled through “talks or bombs.” That is the kind of language that Iran’s leaders understand.
It is not easy to be a conservative in a society in which so many want to believe in the fantasy of global cooperation and endless giveaways here at home. President Trump will never be popular with the nearly one half of our population that voted for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024 because Trump is asking us to recognize the dangers and to make sacrifices, if need be, to respond to them. The threat of a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico was not popular with some Americans, and increased tariffs on China invite retaliation that might harm certain business interests. But the failure to deal with illegal immigration, overspending, and aggression from our adversaries will do far more harm — a fact that liberals will never admit.
The heart of the matter is the naïveté of liberal thinking and the weakness of character associated with it. Liberals from Carter to Biden — and one could go back as far as Woodrow Wilson and FDR and to others before this — have refused to face the fundamental truth that the world is a dangerous place and that we must take precautions. Liberals will scoff, but I know that another global war is coming and that there are only two options: win or lose. And I know that the consequence of losing would be the destruction of our civilization, with all of its freedoms and opportunities.
The world is a dangerous place, and liberals just bury their heads in the sand. As conservatives, we must take the lead in supporting a strong defense, a sound currency, and a growing economy. This will require sacrifices, something that half of Americans seem unwilling to do. There must be spending cuts in other areas if defense spending is to be increased, and there must be further cuts if our economy is to prosper and our currency remain sound.
Liberals are protesting any spending cuts, including cuts in DIE, USAID, and education. But, as is always the case, they refuse to recognize the problems. The U.S. is on a course toward bankruptcy and defeat. The time has come to face the problems and take decisive action.
According to the New York Times, the IRS will begin laying off up to 6,000 staff this week.
(New York Times) – The Internal Revenue Service will begin laying off roughly 6,000 employees on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s push to downsize the federal work force, three people familiar with the agency’s plans said.
The terminations will target relatively recent hires at the I.R.S., which the Biden administration had attempted to revitalize with a surge of funding and new staff, the people said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Trump administration has begun laying off probationary employees — who do not enjoy as much job protection as their more tenured colleagues — across the federal government in recent days.
I.R.S. managers on Wednesday began asking employees to report to the office in the coming days and bring with them their government-issued equipment, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. The I.R.S. employs roughly 100,000 accountants, lawyers and other staff across the country. (read more)
It's kind of telling that any talk about securing our border means running into trouble with the cartel, which has grown powerful in the absence of a strong oppositional leader who effectively let them run wild in the United States. Donald Trump is having to clean up another mess made by Joe Biden in untangling the U.S. from the hold cartels have on it.
Unsurprisingly, people on the left whose entire identities revolve around resisting Trump have taken to mocking Trump for thinking he could somehow stop or defeat the cartels. For instance, take Cleavage McCrazyeyes here, who says Trump will FAFO if he tries to mess with the cartels.
Liberal women are now rooting for the cartels over Trump. Their rooting for a terrorist organization over America. pic.twitter.com/DaLzfCI6xb
I'm not going to get into how leftists will literally cheer for hyper-violent villains if it means owning the bad orange man. These criminal gangs would kidnap a woman like her in a heartbeat, sell her to the highest bidder, and do unspeakable things to her in between, but I guess they aren't as bad as Trump so... whatever.
Let's start from the top.
No, Trump isn't declaring war on the cartels in a traditional sense. He did specify that various cartels are global terrorists, which they are. His aim is definitely to get them kicked out of the United States, but as it stands, there are no plans to gear up the troops and take the war to various parts of Central America.
As it stands, Trump is utilizing airborne surveillance to monitor drug cartel movements so we can develop better methods of countering them. Most of this is happening at the border, with a few happening over Mexican territory. The idea of the U.S. military going into Mexican territory with boots on the ground, tanks, and air support isn't on the table, yet the language being used by outlets like WIRED spread that idea around:
Donald Trump’s executive order designating cartels as terrorist organizations could give his administration greater power to impose economic sanctions, restrict travel, and potentially take military action abroad.
Let's be clear, any military action taken abroad would first to have to be agreed upon by countries like Mexico, and would be a joint operation, but the chances of that happening aren't exactly high. At this time, Trump is more worried about ferreting out the cartels within America, and then keeping them out.
The cartel is attempting to up the ante with U.S. forces on the border, including using kamikaze drones to kill or injure troops, but at this time, there is no plan to invade Mexico using the might of the U.S. military in a straight-up engagement. Could it happen? Anything is possible, but it's also possible that tomorrow you'll wake up on a pile of money. Possible... but highly, highly unlikely.
U.S. special forces going into Mexico to help the Mexican government in small campaigns or engagements is more likely, but not a large-scale war.
But to answer Cleavage's video directly, let's say that the door opens up, and the military is tasked with fighting the cartel directly. Would the U.S. find its match then? Would Trump actually "find out," as they say?
It would hardly be a fight. The cartel isn't one massive organization, it's a bunch of decentralized groups. While there are parts of it that are well-outfitted with high-quality military gear and powerful weaponry, it's nothing compared to the technological advancements, tactics, and destructive capability of the U.S. military. Our ability to gather information, disrupt supply lines, target leaders, and put troops where they need to be swiftly far exceeds that of any cartel.
Let's take the strongest cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel, which is powerful enough to be global. It brings in $3 billion in revenue annually from its activities.
Its total membership isn't fully known, but it's thought to have around 45,000, but not all of these are fighters. In fact, most of them aren't. This cartel also sports heavy weaponry, armored vehicles, and armed drones, as well as surface-to-air missiles. As seen in the Battle of Culiacán, they're capable of swiftly deploying troops and organizing a defense. Their ability to conduct guerilla warfare is pretty solid, and their intelligence networks are extensive, allowing them to keep tabs on activities both at home and abroad.
Pretty impressive.
And it doesn't hold a candle to the capabilities and power of the U.S. military, which sports highly trained soldiers, including multiple elite units like the SEALs and Delta Force, that outclass even the most elite combat units of the cartel. The U.S. has superior tactics, better intelligence gathering, better troops, better armor, and better boomsticks.
To give you an idea of the speed with which the military would defeat the cartel, you can look to a similar militant group, ISIS. Trump tells a story of having a conversation with a general about defeating ISIS. Trump had been told it would take up to two years by others, but upon talking to the general on the ground, he made it clear that he could do the job in a week. Trump gave him the go-ahead, and very soon after, ISIS was pretty much destroyed.
"We did that in a much shorter period of time than it was supposed to be," Trump said. "It was supposed to take -- I will not tell you what a certain general told me. But I went and met a couple of other generals. And I said how long do you think it could take, general? One week, sir. One week? I heard two years. One week, sir. Let us do it the way that we want to do it. I said: General, do it.' And you saw what happened. We had the whole thing."
The cartel's strength would be in its ability to do as Hamas did in Gaza, which is hide behind or blend into the civilian population. Doubtless, civilians would be doing things to protect the cartels, either through bribes or threats. Ultimately, the combination of the Mexican government and the U.S. military would put too much pressure on various groups. Things would fall apart quickly for the cartels as supplies and territorial holds crumbled. The sheer might of the U.S. military would have them on the back foot constantly.
While there would definitely be complications that could slow things down, most of these complications would involve civilians... and the American media.
The cartel's main mode of attack wouldn't be with bullets, it would be utilizing the American anti-Trump corporate media to spread false information about the military's efforts, such as the suffering of Mexican children, to try to make Trump look like he's doing too much damage in this war. The goal would be to utilize the compassion of Americans to turn on Trump, effectively making it more difficult to wage the war.
That is, if Trump let it drag on that long, which I'm not sure he would.
A notice in the federal register [SEE HERE] scheduled to be published on February 20, 2025, outlines how the U.S. State Department under Marco Rubio intends to designate Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and MS13 as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
In combination with enhanced actions by the Dept of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Treasury Dept., the designation opens up a lot of authority for the U.S. government to target not only the gangs, but any entity or enterprise who supports their activity; including the government of Mexico.
WASHINGTON – […] This designation allows the U.S. to impose financial sanctions on these groups and people connected to them, and cooperate with allies to cull cartels. It also allows the U.S. to declare members of these groups as “inadmissible” to the country and ineligible for immigration benefits.
It’s not immediately clear how far these sanctions might go — or who they may target. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The move follows President Donald Trump’s latest efforts to crack down on cartels. On Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order that established a pipeline for cartels and other international groups that “constitute[d] a national security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime” to be labeled as global terrorists.
These moves could expose countries like El Salvador — which the U.S. aims to collaborate with on countermigration, but have also been accused of having dealings with gangs — to terror charges and restrict their cooperation with the U.S. (read more)
Trump has signed an executive order cutting aid to South Africa — Musk’s birthplace — after alleging the country’s majority Black government is wrongfully seizing land from white farmers.
In October 2016, heavily pregnant Mariandra Heunis was putting her youngest to bed in their remote South African farmhouse when she heard the chilling sound of a gun cocking. Turning around, she saw two intruders standing before her.
“They started shouting aggressively; my husband woke up. They demanded money, to which we, in turn, responded that we don’t have money and do not have money in the house, but they could take whatever they want if they just leave us unharmed,” Ms. Heunis, who, like the rest of her family, is white, told me when I interviewed her in 2018. “But he just started shooting. I was terrified. I couldn’t stop the bullets.”
A bullet narrowly missed her six-year-old daughter, who screamed in terror, while her husband, Johann, 43, was shot five times. “They stormed at me and grabbed me up from the couch, demanding that I go with them downstairs. My little girl then put her hand up and offered them her piggy bank,” Ms. Heunis remembered.
“At that moment, my husband got up for the last time. He pleaded. I pleaded. They shot him execution style. They threatened me with a gun to my head and asked where the children were. I told them they had done enough.”
Mariandra Heunis and her husband, Johann Heunis. Network24
The attackers, who were Black, took nothing but their victims’ mobile phones, leaving Ms. Heunis unable to call for help. Five days after burying her husband, the stay-at-home farm wife gave birth to their fourth child. She vowed to fight back against what she claims are racially targeted killings that have claimed thousands of lives.
The New York Sun could not reach Ms. Heunis for further comment. She appears not to have given any interviews in recent times and her YouTube has not been updated for five years.
The Heunis family, however, is among hundreds of farm families who’ve been violently attacked in South Africa in recent years. Many of these victims are from white farming families whose history of working the land goes back many generations to the earliest years of white settlers from Northern Europe, and whose ownership of the farmland has, in some instances, been challenged in recent years by South Africa’s majority Black government.
While there is a shortage of reliable data showing that white farmers are being specifically targeted for violent attacks, or that the attacks are racially motivated, the epidemic of farm attacks has attracted international attention, including from President Trump.
In this file photo dated Monday, Oct 30 2017, a bumper sign calls for the end of farm killings in South Africa, during a blockade of a freeway in Midvaal, South Africa. AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File
Mr. Trump re-ignited a diplomatic firestorm earlier this month by signing an executive order cutting foreign aid to South Africa, accusing its government of “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” The executive order cited concerns over violent attacks and land seizures impacting white farmers — an assertion that has already drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers at Pretoria, the South African capital.
So, what is going on?
Mr. Trump’s move is partially in response to South Africa’s newly enacted Expropriation Act, which allows the government to reclaim certain lands without compensation. The bill aims to address what the Black-dominated government calls historical landownership disparities.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump accused the country’s leadership of committing “Massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum.” The executive order, issued earlier this month, also includes a provision to help resettle white South Africans in the United States. Mr. Trump described them as “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The bill applies to all landowners, regardless of race, if the state determines that the land is needed for public use or redistribution. Yet South Africa’s land reform efforts are intended to address the historical injustices of apartheid.
In South Africa, Mr. Trump’s stance “resonated with conservative groups” there who “believe land redistribution is being used as a political tool rather than a genuine means of redress,” former South African intelligence operator, Tony Schiena, tells the Sun. Mr. Schiena is chief executive of an international security firm, MOSAIC.
A member of the Economic Freedom Fighters, right, confront white farmers, left, during protest outside the magistrates court at Senekal, South Africa, Friday, Oct. 16, 2020 where two suspects were to appear on charges of killing a white farmer in the area. AP/Themba Hadebe
Mr. Trump’s executive order appears to align with the views of his close ally, Elon Musk, the South African-born entrepreneur now overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency that’s upended Washington. Mr. Musk has also previously accused South Africa’s government of having “racist ownership laws” and failing to stop what he called “genocide” against white farmers.
In further justifying his executive order, Mr. Trump pointed to South Africa’s 2023 legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice, where it accused the Israel government of committing genocide in Gaza — a move that strained relations between Washington and Pretoria.
With Israel’s enemies often accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state”–an Afrikaans word that specifically references South Africa–and the South African government concurring by targeting Israel in the international arena, the situation has become a particular irritant for Israel and its supporters in America.
In response to Mr. Trump’s executive order, the South African government has pushed back, accusing the president of distorting facts for political gain. The government of President Cyril Ramaphosa, a virulent opponent of Israel, has defended the law as a necessary step to address racial injustices from apartheid, vowing that “an expropriating authority may not expropriate property arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.”
A farmer prays near the magistrates court in Senekal, South Africa, Friday, Oct. 16, 2020. where two suspects were to appear on charges of killing a white farmer in the area. AP/Themba Hadebe
An Africa-focused geopolitical expert, David Otto, says the controversy over white land ownership is nuanced and complex. The issue traces back to the 1913 Native Land Act, passed by South Africa’s white-controlled parliament, which barred the sale of land from whites to Blacks, and vice versa. The effect of the law was to restrict Black land ownership for generations. Today, three decades after apartheid was formally ended, much farmland remains white-owned.
“The apartheid regime further entrenched land dispossession and racial segregation through laws that restricted land ownership and usage by non-white populations, displacing communities and limiting economic opportunities,” Mr. Otto tells the Sun.
“After the end of apartheid, the new government led by Black South Africans initiated land reform policies aimed at redressing historical injustices. However, the pace of land redistribution has been slow, leading to frustrations among many black South Africans who feel that the promises of land reform have not been fulfilled.”
Apartheid in South Africa, from 1948 to 1994, was a system of institutionalized racial segregation enforced by the minority white government. Apartheid dominated many aspects of life, including where people could live, work, and travel.
A white protester against farm murders stands near the magistrates court in Senekal, South Africa, Friday, Oct. 16, 2020 where two suspects were to appear on charges of killing a white farmer in the area. AP/Themba Hadebe
Mr. Otto noted that, from an economic perspective, South Africa still “has one of the highest levels of economic inequality in the world, largely a legacy of its history.”
“Land ownership is a key factor in economic empowerment, and the unequal distribution of land contributes to ongoing poverty among Black South Africans,” he continued. “The challenge lies in balancing the need for land reform with the rights of existing landowners and ensuring sustainable economic growth.”
Others sharply contend that the confiscation of land, irrespective of ownership, is deeply worrisome.
The managing director of strategic advocacy firm Nestpoint Associates, John Thomas, tells the Sun that this executive order is “fundamentally about property rights.”
“Trump believes individuals should have the right to their property, and he applies that belief broadly, not just in Africa but elsewhere,” Mr. Thomas said. “Foreign aid is being used as a tool to promote pro-American values, and in this case, that includes protecting property rights.”
Prior to President Trump’s executive order to halt aid to South Africa this month, the country received a portion of United States foreign assistance allocated to Sub-Saharan Africa. While specific figures for South Africa are not readily available, it’s noted that annual U.S. aid allocations for Sub-Saharan Africa fluctuated between $7.7 billion and $8.3 billion from fiscal years 2012 to 2022. South Africa was named in the top 10 recipients of nonemergency State Department- and USAID-managed aid allocations globally.
People walk take a break from their vehicles as the freeway is blockaded between Johannesburg and Vereeniging, at Midvaal, South Africa, in protest against the recent murder of farmers, Monday, Oct 30 2017. AP Photo/Themba Hadebe
Mr. Thomas highlighted that this legislation is primarily affecting white farmers, so, while there is a racial component, “Trump sees it more as an issue of fairness.”
“Another concern is that while the government claims it hasn’t seized any land yet, it has the power to do so,” he noted, highlighting that the government leans far left and “would proceed with expropriation if there weren’t pushback from figures like Trump.”
An issue reignited
This isn’t the first time Mr. Trump has criticized South Africa’s policies. In 2018, during his first term, he directed his then secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to investigate the “large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa. Mr. Trump expressed concern over land seizures and violence against white farmers.
Mr. Trump took action after South Africa’s parliament passed a motion that year to amend the constitution to allow for land expropriation from white farmers without compensation. The amendment failed to pass in December 2021 due to insufficient parliamentary support.
Undeterred, Mr. Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law this year, after it successfully passed through the necessary legislative processes, including approval by both houses of Parliament. This new law replaces the outdated Expropriation Act of 1975 and outlines how organs of state may expropriate land in the public interest for various reasons.
A few weeks since the bill became law, there have been no widely reported instances of land being expropriated without compensation. Yet critics contend that the legal cover to potentially take land only adds fuel to the fire of a related and long-running problem: the slaying of mostly white farmers, who reportedly own 70% of commercial farmland, in isolated pockets across the country.
The reality of farm murders
Personal stories and press reports detail gruesome killings of white farmers, in some cases by black suspects. The accounts have included victims hacked with machetes, dragged behind vehicles, shot execution-style, or tortured with farm tools.
President of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa speaks to supporters during the ANC Siyanqoba Rally held inside at FNB Stadium on May 25, 2024 at Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Determining the racial demographics of perpetrators in South African farm attacks, however, is challenging as the South African Police Service does not consistently provide detailed racial breakdowns of offenders involved in these incidents.
Accurate and updated statistics of the breadth of such crimes are hard to come by and widely contested, but it is believed that far more than 4,000 white farmers have been murdered in South Africa since the early 1990s, a shocking figure given that the country has only about 36,000 commercial farmers today.
While authorities attribute these attacks to poverty-driven crime and South Africa’s exceptionally high murder rate overall — 34 homicides per 100,000 people compared to six per 100,000 in the U.S. — the targeted nature and brutality of the killings have fueled claims of racial persecution.
For the likes of Ms. Heunis, the mother of four who survived the attack that killed her husband, and for thousands of others, it is a personal pain that transcends political squabbling.
“Farm attacks in South Africa have been linked to systemic failures in law enforcement. The South African Police Service has been criticized for ineffective investigations, weak sentencing, and granting bail to violent offenders who fail to return for trial. This has led many farming communities to establish their own self-defense networks,” Mr. Schiena explained.
“The government officially supports land redistribution, but critics argue that benefits are disproportionately funneled to the black elite rather than ordinary citizens.”
Vehicles blockade a freeway between Johannesburg and Vereeniging, South Africa, in protest against the recent murder of farmers, Monday, Oct 30 2017. AP/Themba Hadebe
Mr. Otto, however, contended that Pretoria has acknowledged the issue of farm attacks and worked to increase security, forming special units and a task force under the South African Police Service (SAPS) aimed at investigating and responding to incidents more effectively.
“The government engages with farming organizations and industry stakeholders to develop strategies to combat farm violence,” he said. “This collaboration improves communication and response strategies between farmers and law enforcement.”
Still, voices like Ms. Heunis’s and the efforts of activist groups have faced increasing media scrutiny over the years, with critics arguing they are fueling false fears of a “white genocide.” The BBC, for one, “found that there is no reliable data to suggest farmers are at greater risk of being murdered than the average South African.”
The genocide debate
Others — including United States Ambassador to South Africa during the Obama administration, Patrick Gaspard, a Democratic political operative who now oversees the liberal Center for American Progress — have also repeatedly dismissed claims of white genocide as a myth, arguing that farm attacks reflect broader violent crime trends rather than racially motivated extermination.
The likes of Mr. Thomas disagree.
“It’s misleading to downplay the issue or inflate certain statistics to fit a narrative. If you step back and look at Trump’s broader approach, his goal is to promote peace and stability globally,” he insisted. “The reality is that violence is happening, and Trump is using the political tools available to him to protect property rights and support stability.”
In this photo taken Oct. 30, 2017 people place white crosses, symbolically representing farmers killed in the country, at a ceremony at the Vorrtrekker Monument at Pretoria, South Africa. AP
There are others, like Mr. Musk, who have not shied away from framing the issue as a racially motivated crisis. Earlier this month, the X owner directly challenged Mr. Ramaphosa on social media, asking, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”
The future
Even with Mr. Trump’s recent executive order offering resettlement to white South Africans, there is little indication that a significant portion of the Afrikaner community – white South Africans descended from Dutch settlers — is eager to leave. Many remain deeply rooted in South Africa, tied to generations of family —owned farms and businesses.
With internal legal challenges mounting against the Expropriation Act, however, and its continued spotlight from Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk (who is not Afrikaans) straining diplomatic relations, the matter is unlikely to subside anytime soon.
“Our relations with South Africa are a challenge. The government there often resents our role in the world; we reject their criticism,” United States Ambassador to South Africa under George W. Bush, Cameron Hume, tells the Sun. “Both sides ought to seek a realistic basis for relations, and that would require adjustments in expectations.”
Just as it took a single individual, Donald Trump, who could relate to his base and continually grow it to overthrow his own party, the same would need to happen to Democrats. There has to be leadership from the top. Ah, but there’s the rub. Democrat machinery is all about lockstep compliance. As RFK, Jr. found, there’s no room even for a primary insurgency to get started. While there’s an argument to be made that not all Democrats are progressive fascists, and so the party can still be redeemed, the likelihood that any Democrat currently espousing classical liberalism can gain a toehold politically is nil.
