What's the Matter With Minnesota?

Townhall 

Minnesota? Somalis? Nine billion dollars in alleged welfare fraud?

To understand what's going on from a distance, it helps to understand basic culture. Minnesota was settled largely by people of Scandinavian and German ancestry.

In survey after survey, Minnesota has ranked No. 1 or No. 2 among states, often just behind neighboring and much smaller North Dakota, in social connectedness, civic participation, workforce participation and voter turnout. It has traditionally led the nation in levels of trust and conscientiousness.

This has been coupled with political behavior that resembles Scandinavian patterns. Minnesota, like North Dakota and its neighbor Wisconsin, had lively socialist-leaning third parties in the 1930s. It's still the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, the result of a fusion engineered by future Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1944. 

As you might expect, Minnesotans have built a high-tax, high-spending state government. Like Scandinavians, they have trusted the state to provide services and have trusted individuals not to cheat in claiming benefits. Public support for these programs, as in Scandinavia, has traditionally been founded on confidence that aid goes only to the genuinely deserving.

The Somalis who have been the most visible and politically active migrants to Minnesota over the past generation provide a vivid contrast. "The Somali," the conservative writer Helen Andrews quotes a British official, "is convinced that he is entirely different from and vastly superior to any East African." Somalia has been a land of chaos, a home base of pirates.

Their home country has become a kind of no-man's land, an example of what the political scientist Edward Banfield called amoral familism, where people are loyal only to fellow clan members and have no sense of obligations to the mores of the larger society.

That's in vivid contrast, it turns out, to the rampant, possibly billion-dollar-plus frauds perpetrated by Somalis who arrived in Minnesota as refugees and their offspring. Federal prosecutions began in 2022, when Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized prosecutions of the Feeding Our Future program to feed hungry children during the COVID-19 lockdown period. 

As described in The New York Times last November, "State agencies reimbursed the group and its partners for invoices claiming to have fed tens of thousands of children. In reality, federal prosecutors said, most of the meals were nonexistent, and business owners spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad."

In other words, this was a well-organized scam that required the cooperation or acquiescence of large numbers of people, including members of the Somali community as well as non-enforcement and non-auditing public officials.

Were they simply naive Minnesotans, accustomed to an almost entirely conscientious population? Or were they deterred by the charges of racism that would inevitably be launched at anyone questioning a Somali-run operation? Most likely some of both.

Any doubts that Feeding Our Future was a one-off exception have vanished with the exposure of other state-aided programs, which seemed to have no operations and no clients. Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who resigned this week for reasons unrelated to fraud cases, has estimated that Somali-run frauds have swindled $9 billion of public money, and it's undisputed that the total take is at least in the hundreds of millions.

It's an obvious reason that DFL Gov. Tim Walz, the national party's 2024 nominee for vice president, announced last week that he wouldn't seek a third term.

Minnesota liberals like to argue that Somalis have contributed much to Minnesota, but aside from their contribution to racial diversity statistics, they find it hard to come up with specifics. Actual data are not encouraging, showing that even after 10 years in Minnesota, three-quarters of Somali households receive Medicaid, half receive food stamps, and one-quarter receive government cash. Only about half are proficient in English.

These numbers compare unfavorably with those of Hmong refugees who started arriving in Minnesota after the Vietnam War. After five decades, Hmong Minnesotans match state average incomes and home ownership rates, nearly match average high school graduation rates, and have no known involvement in massive welfare fraud.

Somalis, after three decades in Minnesota, have made little progress on those dimensions. A low-trust, low-conscientiousness culture has proved to be stubbornly persistent, and, unlike the Minnesota liberals who helped the Hmong fit in, the last generation of Minnesota liberals has done little to move Somalis away from a dysfunctional culture that they brought from their embattled and unproductive homeland and from an adversarial attitude to the larger American society.

The social connectedness of Minnesota liberals themselves has not disappeared. On the contrary, the network of volunteers monitoring and attempting to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation efforts, described vividly in The Wall Street Journal, is a prime example -- and, as the death of Renee Good on Jan. 7 showed, a tragic one.

It can be seen as an example of organized civil disobedience, only its participants seem to lack any sense that, by trying to obstruct federal law enforcement, they are doing anything morally questionable or potentially felonious. As Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have made it clear, they refuse to enforce federal immigration law and want to prevent the federal government from doing so.

The state and city lawsuits seeking to block federal enforcement, in open defiance of the Constitution's supremacy clause, stand out among the many absurd legal theories advanced by both the Trump administration's opponents and, at times, the administration itself. This posture is not merely wrongheaded but reckless. It places Walz and Frey in the moral tradition of segregationist governors such as George Wallace (D-Ala.) and Ross Barnett (D-Miss.), urging resistance to lawful federal authority, a kind of incitement that, as recent events have shown, can turn deadly for participants and bystanders alike.

Entertainment thread for Jan 16

 

Really need the weather to improve soon.

Trump Torches the 'New World Order'

American Thinker 

President Trump may very well have ended twenty-six years of communist dictatorship in Venezuela.  By cutting off Venezuelan oil and economic relief to Cuba, there’s a chance that sixty-seven years of communist dictatorship will soon come to an end in Castro’s Caribbean prison, too.  Right now Iran’s Islamic dictatorship is teetering and showing signs of potential collapse — forty-seven years after Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy “boys” allowed theocratic tyrants to take the strategically pivotal country before also taking fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days.  Finally, the European Union now realizes that President Trump is serious about keeping North America’s Greenland out of the hands of the Russians and Chinese. 

A saying — falsely attributed to Vladimir Lenin — strikes a chord of truth these days: There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.  Today is no accident of historical fate.  We’re on “Trump Time” now, during which the man in charge is making moves around the world faster than most anyone thought possible.  Love him or hate him, join him or oppose him, marvel at him or demean him — President Trump is the driving force remaking our world today.

Information coming out of Iran is difficult to verify.  We know that incredibly large protests against the ruling theocratic regime have been taking place in cities and towns across the country.  There are reports that civilians are burning mosques and government buildings and attacking the regime’s armed enforcers.  There are reports that Iranian troops have killed a large number of protesters.  The Iranian dictatorship has cut off Internet access to the outside world and made it difficult for cross-border communication.  

Still, President Trump has told Iran’s Supreme Leader that the U.S. will not stand idly by while Islamic thugs murder civilians.  The U.S. will also not be handing Iran’s theocratic tyrants billions of dollars in unmarked bills on wooden pallets in the middle of the night.  Standing back while freedom fighters are blithely executed and handing the executioners bags of cash for pausing the bloodshed is the Barack Obama and Joe Biden way.  The Venezuela operation to capture communist dictator Nicolás Maduro in the dead of night is the Donald Trump way.  And Iran’s Islamic oppressors understand and fear the difference.

Democrat National Committee Chair Ken Martin has been desperately trying to equate the Iranian uprising with the Democrat-sponsored insurrection against federal agents working to arrest violent criminals, rapists, murderers, and other creeps illegally residing inside the United States.  In a social media post, Martin even called Iran’s government a “far-right” regime that was no different from the Trump administration.  

Aside from his casual dishonesty and revolting comparison of an elected Republican to an Islamic dictator, Martin conveniently fails to acknowledge that it was a Democrat president who enabled Iran’s theocratic tyrants to seize power and it was Democrat presidents who continued through the decades to give those tyrants money and other material support in shameful attempts at geopolitical bribery.  President Trump, on the other hand, incinerated Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, took out ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, eliminated countless Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist cells, and annihilated Iran’s most important nuclear research and production facilities.  Embarrassingly, DNC Chair Ken Martin even publicly condemned President Trump’s military operation to weaken Iran’s regime by depriving it of the “prestige” of possessing nuclear weapons.

What Iran regime apologist Ken Martin doesn’t want Americans to remember is this: Iranian theocratic tyrants prosper on Democrats’ watch; they die on President Trump’s watch.  While Ken’s propaganda may succeed with indoctrinated Democrats who are busy obstructing ICE officers from arresting violent foreign nationals illegally residing in the United States, Iran’s Supreme Leader and his murderous enforcers are not so self-confidently ignorant.  They know President Trump is a man willing to end them for good.

In the background of decades-shifting earthquakes shaking up the dictatorships in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, there are consequential foreign policy actions recalibrating America’s outdated relationships with her friends.  The Trump administration has put Europe on notice: The post-WWII arrangement in which the United States pays for the continent’s defense and subsidizes its economy through one-sided trade compacts that benefit Europe’s multinational firms at the expense of American producers and consumers has officially come to an end. 

Keeping most of Europe out of the grip of the Soviet Union and nursing its economy back to health after the devastation of total war were both moral and strategic objectives that helped to plant seeds of political freedom across the continent.  In 2026, however, we are faced with a harsh truth: While those seeds of political freedom did take root and grow for many years in many corners of Europe, the weeds of bureaucratic oppression, viewpoint discrimination, Christian persecution, and rank censorship have grown, too.  

Whatever hopes Bill of Rights-supporting Americans have long had that the Old World might learn to value private property, self-defense, self-determination, and free speech, it is clear that the European Commission and most of its vassal states prefer aristocracy, conditional rights, and authoritarianism deceptively dressed in the garments of “democracy.”  These values — so at odds with the Christian principles and Enlightenment liberalism widely embraced by America’s Founding Fathers and so diametrically opposed to the indispensable understanding that our rights are natural and God-given — are not ones that Americans are willing to safeguard and defend for another century.  American soldiers will not fight and die for European censorship, rigged elections, and bureaucratic tyranny.  American taxpayers will not foot the bill for international institutions disguised as monuments to freedom that instead breed corruption, nepotism, scientific fraud, and cruel tyranny.

In this regard, the Trump administration is taking two simultaneous actions in its mission to cut off as many heads as possible of a globalist Leviathan that threatens international stability and future peace.  

First, the State Department is overhauling how it provides foreign aid.  Besides dismantling the money laundering and regime-change operations of USAID, the Trump administration is no longer handing money to NGO-middlemen that divert taxpayer funds into the bank accounts of leftist-globalist organizations.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio is targeting for destruction the “NGO-industrial-complex” that benefits Western political elites (and their extended families) at the expense of foreign countries receiving aid from American taxpayers.  By reducing government welfare for NGOs, the Trump administration intends to deconstruct an anti-democratic web of unelected, self-aggrandizing experts-in-name-only who exert entirely too much power over international missions and get rich by fleecing hardworking, tax-paying citizens.

Second, President Trump issued a January 7 order directing “all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”  The next day Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent officially notified the UN of America’s intention to withdraw from the body’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the termination of funding to the Global Climate Fund, which finances “climate” initiatives around the world.  By ending American financial support for sixty-six international organizations dedicated to advancing the “climate change” con, discriminatory “social justice” programs, and other leftist-globalist pet causes, President Trump is taking a blowtorch to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the UN-constructed monstrosity known as the “New World Order.”

How have Europe’s aristocratic leeches and globalist tyrants responded to the news?  Germany’s Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier articulated the general sentiment when he accused the United States of committing a “breach of values” and “destroying the world order.”  France’s Napoleonic president, Emmanuel Macron, denounced America for “breaking free from international rules.”  

Breaking free from globalist tyranny, however, is the point.  America is rebelling against the parasitic “New World Order.”  Welcome to the Trumpian revolution.

If There’s No God, There’s No Thought

 Jack Kerwick | Nov 16, 2025 | Townhall

We all take for granted that knowledge is possible. One needn’t be arrogant in order to confidently hold that there are at least some things—actually, a great number of things—that we can claim to know. I know that I exist, that I know that I know that I exist, that I have a body, that I’m sitting here in front of my laptop typing these words, that I have a son, and that 2+2=4.

Knowledge is inseparable from reason, logic, and meaning. 

We wouldn’t be able to have a single coherent, meaningful thought unless we implicitly knew the truth of the most fundamental laws of logic: The Law of Identity, The Law of Non-Contradiction, and The Law of Excluded Middle. 

The Law of Identity is simply the principle that a thing is what it is, and is not what it is not. (“A car is a car. It is not a bike.”)

The Law of Non-Contradiction is the principle that a thing can’t be and not be in the same respect and at the same time. (“A person can never be simultaneously pregnant and not pregnant.”)

The Law of Excluded Middle is the principle that either something is or it is not. (“Either the person is pregnant or is not pregnant.”) 

These are the principles in the absence of which thinking itself—all of our reasonings, as well as the intelligibility of our experiences, great and small—would be impossible. We don’t arrive at the principles of logic through rational argument. They are the basis for the possibility of any arguments. We don’t discover the principles through experience. Experience presupposes the principles, for experience is never an indecipherable, chaotic mess of sense impressions, but, rather, an ordered, intelligible event. 

The principles of logic, then, are the preconditions for the very possibility of knowledge in all of its forms. But an inquiry into the origins of the knowledge that we take for granted can’t end there. We need to ask ourselves: What kind of a thing is a principle of logic? 

In other words, what is the ontological status of a principle?

Now, if the atheist is correct and the cosmos is, ultimately, nothing more or less than matter-in-motion, then, it would seem, the principles of logic would have to be reducible to the physical. This, however, is impossible.  

Matter exists in time and in space. But the principles of logic are bound by neither time nor space. They are true always and forever. To put the point another way, the principles of logic are universal and timeless: They would remain true even if the cosmos self-destructed at this moment, or even if it never began to exist at all. 

The principles, that is, do not begin, and they have no expiration date. 

Matter is perpetually mutating. The principles of logic, though, are immutable.

The principles of logic, the preconditions of knowledge, reason, experience—comprehensively, of thought—are mental. They are the stuff of mind. Yet they can’t originate in my mind or your mind, for our minds are finite and incessantly changing. The principles, though, to repeat, are infinite and changeless. 

Thus, they must be grounded in a mind that is infinite and changeless as well. 

And this is the Mind of God. 

No one denies the principles of logic, for in order to deny them, you must affirm them. Take, for instance, the Law of Non-Contradiction. Aristotle noted long ago that to take a position against the truth of this law is to endorse the truth of it, for in attempting to negate the principle, the arguer recognizes that a position and its negation can’t be simultaneously true. Either the Law of Non-Contradiction is true or it is not. It can’t be both. 

Some critics of TAG have responded by asserting that the laws of logic just are; we needn’t appeal to God. This, though, is an inadequate response in that it fails to account for how infinite, timeless, changeless concepts can exist in a world that is alleged to be purely material and always in flux. 

In contrast, the proponents of TAG account for the principles of logic by viewing them as pointing beyond themselves to God. With God, however, it is indeed enough to say that God just is. God, by definition, is identical with His Being. He is unique insofar as He does not depend, and cannot depend, upon anything for His existence. That the logic of the concept of the Supreme Being entails that the Supreme Being must, well, be, doesn’t prove that God really exists, of course. But it’s valuable in highlighting that the question, “Why does God exist?” is nonsensical in a way that an inquiry into the ground of the principles of logic is not.  To ask, “Why God?” is like asking, “Why does a square have four sides?” The answer to the latter is: “It’s a square. The essence of a square is to be four-sided.” Similarly, it is the essence of the Supreme Being to be. 

This, at any rate, is the crux of the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG).

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Note: This article may be "out of date," but the subject matter cannot be. I ran across it while learning more about the author. He also penned the excellent article "Civil War?"

Civil War?

Townhall 

Recent events in Minnesota regarding ICE have provided the latest occasion for commentators to renew their predictions of an impending civil war.

Whether a civil war is genuinely on the horizon, and whether it would be a good or bad thing, are topics that we can put to one side for the moment. There is a more fundamental question that all Americans from across the political spectrum need to ask themselves: If war comes, do I have the ability and the resolve to successfully master the lethal violence that all war entails?

Your average citizen, if honest, would have to reply to this question with a resounding no. This is especially so with respect to the chatterers and scribblers in the media who tirelessly talk about a new civil war, a war in the streets of the United States. There are reasons for this.

Long ago, Aristotle distinguished “hexis” from “techne.” The latter refers to techniques or skills necessary for the production of the goods of a craft (like, say, carpentry). Technical knowledge can be expressed propositionally and, in theory, discerned intellectually by anyone.

Hexis, however, is something else entirely. It is a capacity, a settled disposition, a habit that a person must cultivate over time through practice. Hexis transforms the agent by way of constituting, or reconstituting, his character. It is second nature: Unlike techne, hexis pertains to a person’s identity, not to his actions, to who he is, not to what he does.

Crucially, hexis is embodied intelligence. A person with a formed capacity knows, subconsciously, not just what to do but how to do whatever it is he needs to do and in whatever the circumstances. His actions appear spontaneous and effortless, for they are a function of the human being that the agent has become. The many nuances and subtleties that comprise hexis defy explicit excogitation, for they are incarnated in the agent’s whole being.

Now, all of this being said, a civil war will necessarily require a scope and intensity of engagement on the part of civilians that’s never been expected of them with respect to foreign wars. It will demand of them that they cultivate a hexis for war-making, that they make themselves into…warriors.

Yet the time to make all of this happen is not after the war has commenced. Anyone who genuinely suspects that a civil war could be in our near future, and those specifically who make a living assuring their audiences that this is so, should be training their bodies regularly, daily, to prepare for this event. If these media figures care a lick about the well-being of their fellow Americans over whom they exert influence, and they sincerely think that a civil war is imminent, they should offer tips as to how their audience members can physically and psychologically prepare themselves for mortal combat.

Few (if any) of these influencers have given any indication that, aside, perhaps, from being gun owners, they’ve taken any steps toward developing the hexis for mortal combat on the streets and in their homes entailed by the coming civil war that they repeatedly prophesy.

Assuming that I’m correct, it’s only fair to add that none of this necessarily means that these influencers are dishonest or manipulative. Precisely because they haven’t made themselves into warriors, into embodiments of the martial virtues, they can’t be expected to think and feel as warriors do. They don’t know what they don’t—and, as of now, can’t—know. 

No one can know what a civil war today would look like. But this is the point: Precisely because it’s simply not possible to know in advance all of the circumstances that would comprise something as unprecedented to our generation as a hot civil war, Americans should be training now to transform themselves into peerless combatants. More specifically, they should implement a training methodology designed to forge new neural networks, to reorganize their nervous systems, in short, to cultivate, within their bodies, a hexis, a capacity, for mastering the use of violence.

There is much that goes into the art of war. I am referring here only to the adeptness of an individual to both evade succumbing to lethal violence as well as to unleash it upon the enemy.

In order to achieve this, a person should train in a martial art, yes, but not one that supplies instruction on techniques to be applied under specific hypothetical conditions. In preparing for a civil war (as in preparing for all and any real-world violent encounters), one needs to prepare oneself to prevail under whatever the actual conditions of conflict happen to be. This, in turn, means that a martial training methodology must be centered upon developing body mastery, the embodied intelligence necessary for knowing how to move one’s body with maximal smoothness, with subtlety, refinement, and efficiency under duress and in the midst of the dynamic, adrenaline-charged conditions of deadly conflict. The more pliable the body, the greater one’s embodied cognition.

The more intelligence that resides within one’s body, the more creative in combat one will be: The combatant will know, subconsciously, in his body, how to adapt to unforeseen circumstances within microseconds, before they become unmanageable. This level of skill and will cannot be taught via instruction in techniques (specific strikes and combinations of strikes), for techniques, like guns or any other artificial weaponry, are only as effective as the person who deploys them, and if a person lacks the proper body development, the embodied intelligence, to move properly under stress and in response to scenarios for which his instruction in techniques has not and cannot prepare him, his training will be for naught.

It is not the technique or the weapon that determines victory in battle. It is the agent.

As the 17th-century samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi memorably remarked: “It is said the warrior’s is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways.”

Public intellectuals and other influencers who talk of civil war would do themselves and everyone else a good turn if they heeded these words.

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How Much Worse Does Minneapolis Have To Get Before Trump Shuts Down Leftist Lawlessness?

The Federalist

President Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to shut down leftist-led attacks against ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But the question everyone should be asking is: How much worse do things have to get before he does so?

The president’s latest Truth Social post came hours after officials revealed yet another federal agent was assaulted while carrying out immigration enforcement operations in the city. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the agent was “ambushed and attacked” by two subjects “with a snow shovel and broom handle” while attempting to detain a Venezuelan national released into the country by the Biden administration.

“As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick,” the agency reported. “Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg. All three subjects ran back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside.”

News of Wednesday night’s events was soon accompanied by reporting of rioters vandalizing and looting what appears to be a vehicle belonging to federal immigration officials. The incidents occurred a week after an anti-ICE activist was shot and killed by an immigration official after she rammed him with her car.

In his Truth Social post, Trump warned that he would invoke the Insurrection Act if “the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job.”

But the reality is that Minnesota’s political leaders have already made clear they aren’t interested in enforcing the law or defending the ICE agents operating in the state.

If anything, Democrats like Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey are actively inciting the violence being waged against the very agents Trump wants protected. Both effeminate officials, for example, wasted no time in laying the blame for Wednesday’s shooting at the feet of the Trump administration and ICE agents.

Walz and Frey have made clear that they have zero intention of enforcing the law. Which means it’s incumbent upon Trump to stop pussyfooting around and do it before any ICE agents get seriously maimed or killed.

This country cannot afford a repeat of the 2020 “summer of love” riots, in which Black Lives Matter and Antifa anarchists were permitted to burn down American cities with little to no consequences from the Trump-run federal government. For too long, these communist footsoldiers’ violent antics have gone unaccounted for.

The time for tough words is over. Trump has an obligation to enforce the law, and it’s way past time that he does.

Third Circuit Nukes Biden Judge’s Blockade on Deportation of Pro-Hamas Foreign Activist

The Federalist

In a major win for the Trump administration, a federal appeals court ended a Biden-appointed district judge’s blockade on the deportation of a pro-Hamas foreign activist on Thursday.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated orders from New Jersey-based District Judge Michael Farbiarz regarding the detainment and attempted deportation of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil. As law professor Mark Goldfeder previously wrote in these pages, Khalil — a Syrian-born green card holder — was detained by federal authorities last year “on the charge that he ‘led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,’ and posed a threat to national security and foreign policy.”

Farbiarz’s orders “prevented the government from removing [Khalil] from the country,” mandated “his release from custody,” and “intervened in his immigration-court proceedings,” according to the circuit court.

In its Thursday decision, the Third Circuit panel found that while Farbiarz did have jurisdiction over Khalil’s habeas petition (i.e. a legal challenge to one’s detention) since he was held by authorities in New Jersey (despite being initially detained in New York), the Biden appointee ultimately lacked “subject matter jurisdiction” over the case under existing federal law.

More specifically, the court found that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) “channels ‘[j]udicial review of all questions of law … arising from any action taken or proceeding brought to remove an alien from the United States’ into a single petition for review filed with a federal court of appeals,” and therefore, “strip[s]” Farbiarz of jurisdiction over the matter.

In other words, the ruling essentially holds “that federal district courts lack power over immigration cases,” as The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland put it.

“Our holdings vindicate essential principles of habeas and immigration law,” the ruling continued. “The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on—in a petition for review of a final order of removal.”

The majority was comprised of Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, who were appointed by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively.

Meanwhile, Judge Arianna Freeman dissented from the court’s judgment and in part from the majority opinion. While the Biden appointee agreed with the majority that Farbiarz rightly possessed habeas jurisdiction, she disagreed regarding the determination that he lacked subject jurisdiction as well.

“In my view, the District Court also had subject matter jurisdiction. Because no provision of the INA stripped the District Court of that jurisdiction, I would review the merits of the grant of injunctive relief,” Freeman wrote.

The Third Circuit’s ruling vacates Farbiarz’s orders and remands the case back to the district court “with instructions to dismiss Khalil’s habeas petition.”

President Trump Identifies the Roadblock to a Ceasefire Between Ukraine and Russia

Conservative Treehouse 

In an interview with Reuters, President Trump was asked why the Russia/Ukraine negotiations appear to have stalled.  President Trump responded with one word, “Zelenskyy.”

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters that Ukraine – not Russia – is holding up a potential peace deal, rhetoric that stands in marked contrast to that of European allies, who have consistently argued Moscow has little interest in ending its war in Ukraine.

In an exclusive interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to wrap up his nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskiy, the U.S. president said, was more reticent.

“I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump said of the Russian president. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal.”

Asked why U.S.-led negotiations had not yet resolved Europe’s largest land conflict since World War Two, Trump responded: “Zelenskiy.”

[…] Trump told Reuters he was not aware of a potential upcoming trip to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, which Bloomberg reported earlier on Wednesday.

Asked if he would meet Zelenskiy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week, Trump said he would but implied no plans were set. “I would – if he’s there,” Trump said. “I’m going to be there.”

Asked why he believed Zelenskiy was holding back on negotiations, Trump did not elaborate, saying only: “I just think he’s, you know, having a hard time getting there.” (read more)

Well folks, there’s the confirmation.

What President Trump indicates in that direct response is exactly the sense that has been visible for several months.

The U.K, Germany, France and European Union have established their zero-sum position against Russia using the proxy that Zelenskyy represents.  At the same time these same EU leaders are demanding that President Trump guarantee the security structures the EU is putting together.  It is a ridiculous situation. {GO DEEP}

Keep in mind this is happening at the same time Zelenskyy has selected former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as the lead on his economic development team.  If there was one signal Zelenskyy could send that would trigger President Trump to reevaluate everything, the appointment of Freeland was it.  Donald Trump knows Chrystia Freeland.

The economic development recovery and reinvestment plan for Ukraine was in the portfolio of Jared Kushner.  Kushner was also a big part of the USMCA negotiations with Mexico.  Chrystia Freeland was a major antagonist in the USMCA trade deal.  Both Donald Trump and Jared Kushner know the globalist and corrupt Freeland very well.

The U.K, France and Germany support Zelenskyy’s position that he is not going to concede any territory to the Russian Federation, specifically the 30% of the Donbas area in Eastern Ukraine currently at the heart of the physical conflict.

The 30% issue surrounds the Donetsk region in Ukraine, which includes the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Russia is currently pushing deep into fortified Ukraine resistance in this region with a population of around 100,000. Zelenskyy claims losing this area would allow Putin to invade the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions.

Historically, this Donbas area was part of a brutal long-term Ukraine civil war between the pro-Russia eastern Ukrainian citizens and the pro-EU western aligned Ukrainian army. Russia’s current position is for Ukraine to cede the entire Donbas to Russia as part of the ceasefire agreement, or Russia will continue forward conflict military operations until successful.

Seeing things through the pragmatic prism of inevitability, President Trump’s view appears to be that this Donbas area will be lost to Russia one way or the other. So, the best scenario to stop the killing is for Ukraine to give up this territory as part of the ceasefire terms. Zelenskyy, with support of the EU, France, Germany and U.K says a firm “no.”

That’s where things stand.