EU Industry Slides into Recession Despite Subsidies

The EU has become a gigantic extraction and intervention corpus now entering an acceleration phase.

American  Thinker 

In response to the COVID lockdowns, the EU Commission officially issued its first Eurobond in 2020 under the label  "NextGenerationEU." Since then, hundreds of billions of euros have been poured into struggling sectors of the green transition to manipulate growth rates and keep the green crony economy afloat. Last month, this effect completely evaporated.

One of the EU Commission’s core competencies is to operate clandestinely and silently in the glaring public spotlight, creating facts regardless of consensus. This applied during Jean-Claude Juncker’s tenure and is even more true under his successor Ursula von der Leyen.

Years ago, Juncker succinctly outlined the EU Commission’s soft-totalitarian principle in an interview: a measure is decided, put out into the space, and one waits to see what happens; if there is no major uproar, it is simply advanced step by step until there is no turning back.
Anyone who feels untroubled by this statement has yet to realize how far the concentration of power in Brussels has already advanced.

Rule-Based Order

One of the many massive breaches of Brussels’ rules in recent years was the introduction of categorically forbidden communal debt. This had once been Germany’s condition for giving up the Deutsche Mark and joining the Euro. True to the Juncker motto, the EU bureaucracy shamelessly exploited the COVID lockdowns and organized the first NextGenerationEU joint bond issuance.

Of course, liability for these commission-initiated bonds lies with the member states. While an upper limit of 0.6 percent of the gross national income of all member states was agreed upon, it is clear that the German taxpayer, as the largest financier of Brussels’ climate-socialist central planning experiment, bears the primary risk -- “make it green,” no matter the cost.

Over €800 billion in fresh credit was subsequently raised, trickling down to member states year after year through programs like REACT-EU, Invest-EU, HORIZON Europe, or Resc-EU.

This mainly allowed chronically low-growth, heavily indebted southern states to stabilize their socialist governments in the face of rising opposition from conservative forces.

Subsidy Apparatus of the Brussels Technocracy

The subsidy infrastructure, split across numerous individual programs, follows exactly the ideological blueprint of the Brussels technocracy. Its goal is to embed the bureaucratic apparatus as a vehicle of power deep within member states administrations. Brussels is everywhere: Ubi Ursula, ibi imperium! 

The distribution of this immense credit volume practically necessitates growing administrative structures and public-sector jobs. The upcoming EU budget of over €2 trillion for 2028-2034 will ensure that these bureaucratic channels remain liquid, operating like well-stocked pipelines with fresh credit at taxpayers’ expense and rising inflation.

The initiators of NextGenerationEU, the minds behind von der Leyen’s Commission, quickly realized that the locked-down economies would accept any credit with open arms and endure literally any form of centrally planned economic directive.

The logical consequence was to tie the struggling states, particularly Italy and Spain, to the credit, coupled with Brussels’ investment conditions: wind energy, solar power, or social programs to overshadow mounting migration pressure -- Brussels sets the direction, and the vassal states follow, lacking alternatives.

Industrial Hubs Bear the Burden

Industrial hubs -- especially Germany’s automotive and machinery sectors -- pay a socially corrosive, unacceptable price for the green socialism experiment, whose mastermind, ironically, can be found in Berlin. The irony: Europe’s crisis once again stems from Germany, where creditworthiness was leveraged to fuel this economic frenzy. It is in Germany that NGOs run rampant at industry’s expense, gaining strength to entrench themselves elsewhere.

Until December, Brussels managed to artificially sustain the struggling economic hubs of Italy and Spain. Travelers through southern Spain witness the scale of cultural-aesthetic destruction: in Andalusia, wind farms sprout like weeds across farmland. Farmers face expropriation if they resist the green diktat -- Brussels carves a trail of devastation through paradisiacal landscapes, supported by accomplices at all political levels.

Yet the credit-fueled parasitic economy produced a special effect: Spain recorded high growth rates until December, allowing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, guided by favorable media, to repeatedly tout a Spanish growth miracle.

It mattered little that the green “artificial” economy generated no real value and that Spain suffers globally high youth unemployment. What counts is the media spectacle, the illusion of Iberian prosperity.

Italy shows a similar pattern: national debt exceeds 120 percent, new borrowing is high, and Giorgia Meloni’s government takes whatever Brussels offers on a silver platter -- what politician would refuse?

The statistical manipulation effect triggered by NextGenerationEU cannot be underestimated. Since 2020, states like Spain and Italy have received an artificial GDP boost equivalent to 10 percent of the GDP generated since then. This is not real value creation, but a purely statistical effect to justify useless state consumption, producing nothing beyond bureaucracy costs. Media coverage rarely mentions this; what matters is the perceptual effect on the population -- the illusion of growth while everything else crumbles.

Recession Hits the Eurozone

December finally brought some clarity to the Eurozone’s situation. German industrial indicators are alarming: the PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) fell to 47.7, deep in recessionary territory -- a trend unbroken since 2018. For Brussels’ central planners, even the artificially boosted southern economies are now hit: Spain’s PMI fell to 49.6 in December, Italy’s to 47.9 after years of positive figures.

The Eurozone’s overall value is 48.8. Europe is in open recession, despite -- or precisely because of -- ever-growing state impulses, new credit programs, and government interventions. Germany’s projected growth for 2026 is just 0.7 percent. With a state share above 50 percent and new borrowing at a nominal 5.5 percent, private industry is set to shrink over 4 percent -- an impending catastrophe.

Limits of Central Planning

Europe’s economic management has reached its limits. Every additional euro of state credit no longer produces any real growth, even statistically. On the contrary, the state as a market actor robs private businesses of the potential to invest in structures necessary to produce goods and services citizens actually demand.

The state has become a gigantic extraction and intervention corpus now entering an acceleration phase. Practitioners recognize what is wrong with the economy. Yet the political incentive structure of permanent subsidies and armies of public employees stifles even the smallest sprouts of constructive criticism.

No fertilizing impulses are expected from state economics either. Just yesterday, economic expert Achim Truger rejected a preemptive corporate tax relief scheduled for 2028 as a “stupid idea,” after having already recommended an inheritance tax hike on family businesses in December. State-endorsed pseudo-scientists have replaced genuine economic expertise, beholden to increasing statism.

Germany hardly has independent scholarship left where economists can openly discuss Eurozone problems. We face a monopoly on opinion, safeguarding a power apparatus that now deploys censorship mechanisms to silence critics. At its core, this accelerates the transfer of wealth from the private sector to the state and its hyper-bureaucracy -- until the private economy, the host of the extraction system, collapses under the toll.

Podcast thread for Jan 11

 

Ever wonder some days if you might actually be in some kind of **** with yourself? And if you'll ever get out of it?

Children of the Long March

The pattern is clear: foreign born, Neo-Marxist academics come to America, work at major universities, teach Neo-Marxist ideas to their students, and their children, inheriting their parents’ ideologies, enter politics.

American  Thinker 

Pattern recognition -- the brain’s ability to perceive similarities and relationships between objects, numbers, and events -- is used in IQ tests as a way to help measure cognitive intelligence.

Here’s a pattern to consider.

Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City on the steps of an old, abandoned City Hall subway station early on New Year's Day.

His father, Mahmood Mamdani FBA (Fellow of the British Academy) is a Ugandan academic, political commentator, and the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. He also serves as the chancellor of Kampala International University in Uganda. Mahmood teaches African and international Politics, colonialism and post-colonialism, and his work is based on Marxist theory, although he identifies as a democratic socialist, not as a Marxist.

His son, Zohran, identifies as a Democratic Socialist as well, and is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Zohran was born in Uganda, but is a naturalized U.S. citizen. However, his mother, left-wing filmmaker Mira Nair, explains; Zohran… “was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian.” 

Both Mamdani’s parents are Indian born, but live in America. Judging from their work and rhetoric, they don’t like America very much. Neither does their son. However, they seem to like living here.

Like Zohran Mamdani’s mother and father, former Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Gopalan became a naturalized American citizen in 1970. She was involved in the American civil rights movement while a graduate student at wildly progressive UC Berkley and met her future husband, Donald Harris, at a meeting of the Afro-American Association -- a students' group whose members would eventually go on to help found the Black Panther Party. While neither a prominent Marxist nor a university professor, Gopolan was involved in radical, neo-Marxist political circles in the 1960s.

However, Kamala Harris’s father, Donald Harris, is Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Donald Harris claims to be a “Neo-Keynesian” economist. But, according to the left-wing New Yorker Magazine, Harris taught courses in Marxian economics. While calling himself a “Neo-Keynesian”, Mr. Harris gives great credence to Marx’s economic theories. For example, he wrote an article in the Journal of Political Economy in 1972 called “On Marx's Scheme of Reproduction and Accumulation.”

Harris was born in Brown’s Town, Jamaica but was naturalized as an American Citizen. He taught at University of Wisconsin (Madison), Northwestern, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: all bastions of far left, progressive (Neo-Marxist) ideology. 

Harris also worked as an economic adviser to the Jamaican government for many years. According to Atlas of Economic Complexity “Jamaica… rank(s) as the 76th richest economy per capita out of 145 studied. Its 2.75 million inhabitants have a GDP per capita of $7,032 ($11,856 PPP; 2023). GDP per capita growth has averaged 0.6% over the past five years, above regional averages.”

It appears that Harris’ expert, Neo-Keynesian “advice” hasn’t done much to help Jamaica’s economy -- or its people.

Like Donald Harris and Mahmood Mamdani, former Secretary of Transportation and potential Democratic Party candidate for President Pete Buttigieg ’s father, Joseph A. Buttigieg was a left-wing professor.

Born in the small island nation of Malta, Joseph Buttigieg was a Professor at University of New Mexico Las Cruces and at Notre Dame, where he served as chairman of the English Department. Buttigieg retired as the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English. He co-translated and co-edited the three-volume English edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, and was a founding member and president of the International Gramsci Society. In the far-left publication The Nation, Sara Marcus wrote “…Joseph A. Buttigieg was internationally renowned for his authoritative translations of Antonio Gramsci, Italy’s most enduring Marxist intellectual.” 

Joseph A. Buttigieg , like Zohran Mamdani, Donald Harris, and Shyamala Gopalan, became a naturalized American citizen.

Closely matching the pattern is former President Barack Obama. Obama’s father, while not a professor, was an economist of a "leftist bent." His economic and political views were influenced by mid-20th-century "development economics" and a form of Africa Socialism -- an ideology which focused on state-led development to address poverty and inequality. Although he hardly knew the man, former President Obama wrote Dreams From My Father about him.

Obama’s mother, Anne Dunham, held a PhD from the university of Hawaii. Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974 but wasn’t awarded her PhD until August 9, 1992 - more than 20 years of university affiliation. Moreover, Obama was closely tied to radical Neo-Marxist mentors and surrogate father-figures Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Frank Marshall Davis.

The pattern is clear: foreign born, Neo-Marxist academics come to America, work at major universities, teach Neo-Marxist ideas to their students, and their children, inheriting their parents’ ideologies, enter politics.

The apples haven’t fallen far from the tree.

The question is, to what end?

Joseph A. Buttigieg’s favorite communist, Antonio Gramsci, was head of the Italian Communist party. After an assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini, he was imprisoned in 1923 as “a threat to the state." Gramsci died behind bars in 1937. While in prison he wrote his Prison Notebooks, which contained, among other communist ramblings, his theory of “cultural hegemony” -- the claim that a ruling class maintains power by controlling a society’s worldview as much as by use of direct force. Gramsci argued that social change requires protracted cultural and intellectual struggles in order to build a new “counter-hegemony” within civil society. Only after winning this battle for public consciousness can a "war of maneuver" (direct revolution) succeed; a "war of maneuver” like the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020.

During the turbulent 1960s a prominent German student leader and activist Rudi Dutschke advocated radical social change through a "long march through the institutions.” Dutschke's idea was for Marxist to take positions in institutions -- government bureaucracies, the judiciary, and the universities -- and undermine the culture from within. Inspired by Gramsci, Dutschke named his strategy after Mao’s 6,000-mile tactical retreat in 1934, the Long March. The retreat kept Mao’s communist army from annihilation and led, eventually, to the Chinese Communist Party taking control of China.

Rudi Dutschke’s “long march through the institutions,” based on Antonio Gramsci's’ “counter-hegemony” theory, has had some success.

Vladimir Lenin famously said, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”

His adherents have been taking his advice. The pattern is clear.

Here's How Much Commie Mamdani's 'Affordable' Government Housing Will Cost You

 

Amy Curtis  | January 11, 2026 | Townhall

New York City's socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of making things "free" and "affordable." That was a lie, of course. He has no authority to, for example, make the city's buses and subways "free" for commuters. In fact, a few days after he took office, the subway fare climbed to $3 per ride.

He also thinks he can make World Cup tickets "available to all New Yorkers," because — like all socialists — he has no idea how the real world actually work.

But his most nefarious plans come from housing. He and his housing/tenant advisor Cea Weaver, hate private property (yours, not theirs, of course) and want to abolish it so everyone can live in government housing. It'll be free or affordable, they promised. And high-quality.

Anyone who has spent any time in government-run anything knows it's neither affordable nor high-quality.

And now the "warmth of collectivism" will cost you 30 percent of your income if you want to keep a roof over your head.

"What I am envisioning," Weaver said, "is a world in which the housing is owned by a collective. And people are paying 30 percent of their income in order to live in their housing."

We thought housing was a right.

What does Weaver mean we have to pay for something that's a right?

"If your income is zero," Weaver continued, "you pay zero. If your income is $500,000 a year, you're paying 30 percent of that. And the government is...the sort of owner or not even the owner. The government doesn't have to be the owner, but the government is what's making sure all of that sort of works and cash flows."

She also admitted something without knowing she admitted it: the "collective" won't own anything. The government will. That's what they mean by the "warmth of collectivism": AWFLs like Weaver will decide where and how you live, and take all of your money for it.

And anyone who makes $500,000 a year is going to figure out a way to dial that down to $0 a year. Who in their right mind would continue working to pay for sub-par housing when their neighbor who sits at home and does nothing pays nothing?

We’re In A Slow-Rolling Civil War, President Trump Needs To Recognize It

Townhall 

As a general rule, I don’t want to see people hit by cars. At least, I used to not want to. And, I suppose, I still don’t, but I wouldn’t mind Democrats, in and out of the media, ALMOST hit by a car so they can experience that immediate fear that comes when it happens. Then they can lecture me about what the ICE officer who was actually hit by Renee Good should have done instead of defending himself from the idiot leftist who was either trying to kill him or so stupid that she’d put herself into a position to panic and react stupidly in a way that he absolutely was justified in shooting her.

“Drive, baby, drive,” said Good’s wife as the tires spun and the high bumper of their SUV hit the officer, pushing him backwards – both feet at once, meaning either Good hit him or she was a Jedi with The Force – on the ice. Were he not standing on ice his feet would have had traction and he would have fallen, likely to be run over by several tons of the vehicle. 

Democrats don’t care. They’d rather have law enforcement officers dead than, well, anything else. 

The day before, Democrats spent hours praising Capitol Police for “protecting” them on January 6, 2021, and the next day it was back to “all cops are bastards!” for the left. How?

It’s pretty easy. Capitol Police protect THEM, all other officers protect us, and they don’t give a damn about us. They are important, the rest of us are obstacles. 

The most anti-Second Amendment leftist politicians, media personalities or celebrities use armed security every time they feel like there is a possibility that someone might threaten them. If you want to defend yourself, screw off. You are disposable. 

Renee Good was disposable. She became more useful to these grave dancing ghouls in death than she ever could be alive. 

Good and her wife, in the officer’s cell phone video (it wasn’t a body cam, I don’t know why so few in the media can get this basic fact right) come off like women who have been insulated from consequences their entire adult life. By that I mean, they were aggressive and annoying in their actions and words – the type of people who get into someone’s face and scream that they dare them to hit them, knowing they won’t. 

Anti-American Democrat groups, funded largely by billionaires like George Soros and Neville Roy Singham (look him up – if we had a competent Justice Department and FBI leadership over the last year, he would have been charged in a massive RICO case, but we didn’t…), and they train people to go right up to the line and dare police to hit them. Police don’t – their careers and freedom are on the line, while these Karens only have celebrity and a Rachel Maddow tongue bath interview awaiting them – but sometimes, these mentally unstable Democrats do cross the line and spit or hit cops. 

They are immediately arrested, then released on bail. Within 3 months, once people stop paying attention, charges get dropped. Any lawyer they may need in that time is free (either volunteer or paid by those rich guys), and they walk away to do it all over again, heroes to mutants and in their own minds.

That adds up – giving a sense of being 10-feet-tall and bulletproof. Renee Good found out the hard way just how false that feeling is. You can argue all day whether or not you think Good deserved to die, but she certainly earned it.

She hit the officer with her car, as her wife encouraged her to act stupidly. Her motivation matters not when instilling a justified fear for his life in the officer. 

Over her suicide by stupidity, the left wants civil war. They’re still angry they lost the first one, and are always looking for an opportunity to murder people who refuse to obey them.

These people are evil. There’s really no other word for it. Watch this video of these morons obstructing law enforcement and ask yourself if any injuries they might incur would be their responsibility or not? It’s impossible to care what happens to people like this, they’re demented. And Democrats take advantage of them.

Renee Good was a mother, either of one or three kids. I’ve heard both reported and haven’t bothered to look it up because she actively chose activism over her kid(s) and life. How was she able to afford to be out on a weekday, during work hours, playing activist? Was she paid? Was this her job? If we have a good media and competent FBI we might find out. I’m not holding my breath.

Good wasn’t alone, these demented weirdo women who are missing something in their lives that leads them to the streets and to put their lives in danger to protect rapists and murders are large in number. More will probably die – you can’t fix stupid, especially when coupled with an arrogant sense of purpose rooted in emotion, and these people are nothing but emotion. They can’t talk, they can’t communicate, they can’t make an argument, all they can do it start fights and yell. 

“Drive, baby, drive,” will be on a bumper sticker before too long, indicating that money is more important than Renee’s life to the left, and maybe to her. She may well be happy to have been a martyr, false as it is, to the cause. Democrats canonize junkies, surely Good will be a mural by the end of the week.

But none of it will change the reality that she got exactly what anyone in that situation would have opened themselves up to. FAFO. 

As long as Democrats encourage people to play in traffic, more people will die. As long as Democrats encourage people to threaten others, more people will die. As long as Democrats encourage people to attack police, more people will die. As long as Democrats encourage illegal aliens to stay in the country and people devoid of meaning in their personal lives to aid and defend them, people will die. 

It’s already a slow-rolling civil war. As Democrat politicians and law enforcement encourage it and turn up the volume of the threats, that civil war will pick up speed. Democrats don’t care. Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Dana Bash, etc., will not be harmed – they have security and won’t be within three solid tee shots of any of the violence they inspire – they’re evil, not stupid.

The liberal establishment recruits and preps the fodder, they don’t even get close enough to smell the powder from the cannons. 

But make no mistake, war by proxy is still war. President Trump needs to recognize this, articulate the case against them, and act swiftly to make sure they don’t cause more destruction than they already have.

And he needs to clean the rest of the house at the DoJ and FBI, get rid of the remaining failed leadership and bring in competent people who will fight as hard as Democrats do to put as much of this mob of Brownshirts away. Let them serve as an example of what not to do, as Renee Good’s death should…but probably won’t.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

When Can We Start Uprooting Domestic Terror Cells Attacking Law Enforcement?

It’s been a year since Trump took back the White House — how is it possible we know so little about these cells, and when will we see mass arrests of these paid agitators and the politicians who are determined to use whatever power they have to help them?

The Federalist 

By now, most people have seen about six different angles of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s encounter with left-wing radical Renee Nicole Good, proving he was fully justified in using lethal force to stop her from bulldozing over innocent people.

Good was reportedly a member of an insurgency cell called “ICE Watch,” where she received training as a “warrior” to act against ICE agents conducting lawful enforcement operations against illegal aliens.

But why are we just hearing about this domestic extremist group now? Why does it seem like law enforcement doesn’t know anything about the very active, well-funded, and mobile groups hellbent on obstruction at a minimum, and in many cases, violence?

Vice President J.D. Vance addressed some of these concerns in a Thursday press conference, going after corporate media headlines that never mentioned Good’s use of her vehicle as a murder weapon.

“What that headline leaves out is that that woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation in the United States of America. What that headline leaves out is that that woman … is part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to doxx, to assault, and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job,” he said. “It’s a tragedy of the making of the far left. They have radicalized a very small segment of the population, taught them that ICE agents are engaging in wide-scale violation of people’s rights.”

Good was the mother of a 6-year-old, and the left-wing media will keep regurgitating that she was simply driving through the area after dropping her child off at school. But based on all the evidence, she was there for the sole purpose of obstructing ICE, as part of her duties to her insurgency cell.

That reality reveals something more sinister, as Vance argued.

“What young mother shows up and decides they’re going to throw their car in front of ICE officers who are enforcing legitimate law?” Vance said Thursday. “You’ve got to be a little brainwashed to get to that point to where you’re willing not, not just to protest — that’s fine — not peacefully protest, but throw your vehicle in front of legitimate law enforcement officers and drive your car into them. To get to that point, you have to be, I think, radicalized in a very, very sad way.”

The problem is that there are thousands of Americans who fit that description. These individuals are apparently so deranged, so seething with hatred for the country and the priorities of the American people (like deportations), and so self-involved that they would rather risk their own lives trying to obstruct or kill police officers without a thought of the duty they have to their children.

There is far-left radicalized rot in the country, and up to this point, there has not been a reciprocal sense of urgency to dismantle it.

Vance said something fairly revealing when answering a question about who is behind these terror networks: “It’s one of the things we’re going to have to figure out.” He then added:

When somebody throws a brick at an ICE agent, or somebody tries to run over an ICE agent, who paid for the brick and who told protesters to show up and engage in violent activity against our law enforcement officers? You see just with this most recent terrible incident in Minneapolis, you see friends of this woman’s or other people who are eyewitnesses saying basically that she was there to engage in obstruction of a legitimate law enforcement operation. How did she get there? How did she learn about this? There’s an entire network, and frankly some of the media are participating in it, that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers. It’s ridiculous. It’s preposterous, and part of our investigatory work is getting to the bottom of it. Who’s funding it? Who’s supporting it? Who’s cheerleading it? And of course, if there’s illegal activity related to that, we’re gonna get to the bottom of that and prosecute it where we can.

It’s been a year since President Donald Trump took back the White House — how is it possible we know so little about these cells, and when will we see mass arrests of these paid agitators and the politicians who are determined to use whatever power they have to help them?

This car-ramming was just one of 100 similar attacks against federal law enforcement since Jan. 20, 2025, as The Federalist reported. But we’ve known about these kinds of people at least since 2020, when they came out in droves to burn American cities to the ground and loot everything in sight. We’ve known since before 2020.

These are not organic movements; they are highly organized blitzkrieg operations with funding and the support of politicians.

Just look at the threats from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: “If any law enforcement agent, any ICE agent is gonna come to Philly to commit crimes, then you can get the F out of here.”

“I will charge you with those crimes. You will be arrested. You will stand trial. You will be convicted,” he said, adding later, “Donald Trump cannot pardon you for a state court conviction. Do you hear me, ICE agents?”

That’s what a real insurrection looks like, and if Krasner follows through with those threats, he needs to be arrested and thrown in prison.

Calls for the Trump administration to go after the terrorists, their funders, and their political and media protection have been longstanding. As The Federalist reported, if Trump does not crush far-left terror networks, they will crush his movement.

And, as my colleague Joshua Monnington pointed out, we need a J6-level manhunt for these obstructionists. It needs to be systematic, swift, and country-wide. But based on what the American people have seen so far, and what the vice president said Thursday, law enforcement seems to be well behind the informational curve.

When Antifa was rightly designated a terror organization, where was the massive operation to find these terrorists and throw them in prison? Antifa is one group sure to be interconnected with other groups, like “ICE Watch.”

The American people are entitled to live in communities that are not liable to become overrun at any given moment with militants who do so with the blessing of left-wing politicians and attorneys who run their cities like warlords.

Thankfully Vance seems to understand the issue, but now is the time for the Trump administration to prove its fortitude.

“We’re not going to give in to terrorism on this. And that’s exactly what’s happening: People trying to antagonize, to commit acts of violence, they throw bricks at them, sometimes they shoot at them, sometimes they doxx them, sometimes they go to their place of residence and harass their families,” Vance said. “This is classic terrorism, and we cannot say that when a far-left fringe is inciting violence against our brave law enforcement officials that we’re no longer going to enforce the law.”

Secretary Rubio Outlines the Three Phases of Stabilization in Venezuela

During the energy roundtable, Secretary Rubio made remarks outlining the three phases within the U.S. policy toward Venezuela.  Essentially the core of the policy is: (1) Stabilization; (2) Transition, and (3) a Return to sovereign representative democracy.

The initial phase is ‘stabilization,’ where the U.S. government is working with existing leadership in Venezuela under tight controls and clear expectations.  Reconciliation of political factions is supported. The U.S. leverage is maintained by financial and economic control, provided by the threat of U.S. military.  Venezuela’s oil production pays for U.S. oversight.

The second phase involves ‘transition’, where the civic and governing responsibilities are shared between the existing Venezuelan leadership and aligned policy of the U.S. government.  In the transitional phase the economic wealth is apportioned to the people of Venezuela with oversight by the U.S. government.

The third phase ‘sovereign representative democracy’ happens when the reformed government holds legitimate elections to decide the representative form of government, the voice of the people, within Venezuela.  The U.S. influence then begins to withdraw, and new sovereign political leadership takes control.

President Trump Proposes One Year Cap on Credit Card Rates at 10 Percent

Details are scant, and I’m not exactly sure how this would work, but President Trump has proposed a one-year freeze on credit card rates at 10%.

[SOURCE]

As noted by Politico, previous “legislation sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and cosponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) would impose a 10 percent cap on credit card rates for five years. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House.”  Yet, unilateral authority by a President does not seem evident.

If anyone has any information on how this could be accomplished, feel free to share. I’m not sure how this can be done.

Illegal Immigrant Used Stolen Identity to Vote in Multiple U.S. Elections, Feds Say

Townhall 

An illegal immigrant pleaded guilty to voting illegally in the 2020 election and to lying on a passport application. 

Jose Gargenis Vasquez-Rosa, a citizen of the Dominican Republic who was illegally residing in the United States,  pleaded guilty to three counts: False statement in a United States passport application, false statement of United States citizenship with the intent to obtain a federal benefit and illegal voting by aliens.

In 2002, Vasquez-Rosa applied for a visa to enter the United States as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, but his application was denied because the relationship was deemed fraudulent. 

Then, in 2016, Vasquez-Rosa, who was illegally living in Michigan, assumed the identity of a Puerto Rican man. 

Using this fraudulent identity, Vasquez-Rosa applied for a Michigan driver’s license and, at the same time, was registered to vote. Utilizing this fraudulent identity, Vasquez-Rosa then voted in-person in the 2018 election and voted again by absentee ballot in the 2020 election. Also in 2020, Vasquez-Rosa attempted to illegally obtain a United States passport by submitting a passport application using the same fraudulent identity. However, the fraudulent application was detected by the Department of State and no passport was issued.

United States Attorney Gorgon stated, “American citizens paid for the right to vote with their blood. This illegal alien lied to get into our country and stole that right. And we won’t let criminals undermine our elections.”

"The Diplomatic Security Service is committed to making sure that those who commit identity theft face consequences for their criminal actions,” said DSS Resident Agent in Charge Matthew Kupec. "DSS works closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners to investigate passport, visa fraud, and other transnational crimes. Deterring, detecting, and investigating U.S. passport and visa fraud is essential to protecting the integrity of U.S. borders and preventing illegal immigration.

Vasquez-Rosa faces a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment. 

Guys, that thing that never happens happened again. "Aliens Charged with Illegally Voting in a Federal Election and Making False Statements While Applying for U.S. Citizenship" https://t.co/dcQjr1p2ZV

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 9, 2026

Vasquez-Rosa lied, cheated, and stole to enter the U.S. and influence our elections. Who knows how many other illegal immigrants are voting in our elections, using fake identities, and applying for federal and state benefits? 

Vasquez-Rosa is the reason why we have immigration laws.