Trump Is Righting Latin America

American Thinker 

I am proud to be an American, not just because our nation has lasted 250 years with great success under the same charter, but because of our positive influence around the world.

In World War I, we turned the tide in favor of the Allied forces. 

In World War II, Nazi totalitarianism would have won, but the United States bolstered Allied forces overseas and in the European theater. Japanese aggression throughout Southeast Asia, from 1931 to 1945, ended because of America. We dropped two atomic bombs on their homeland, and we forced their surrender.

The Cold War was the longest conflict. Yes, there were fewer battles, but many sanctions, lots of threats, and too many incursions and expansions of communist influence around the world. The United States stood firm against the Soviet Union and its satellites. President Nixon’s rapprochement with China and Reagan’s tough diplomacy hastened the Soviet Union’s decline.

The world received an unexpected Christmas gift on December 25, 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev declared the official dissolution of the Soviet Union.

North Korea still embraces its Stalinist cause, but faces increasing isolation, forcing them to allow increased economic liberalism.  China incorporated market reforms while retaining its authoritarian regime, but a population implosion, weakening trade, and increased indebtedness are dooming the country.

President Trump has increased the pressure on these rogue regimes, demanding economic freedom and political reforms. He has unchained American dependence on China, networked rapprochement between North Korea and South Korea, and resisted Putin’s designs on Eastern Europe and the Caucasus Mountains. Indonesia and Vietnam have also become more friendly towards the United States. Freedom has a chance when nations begin to comply and cooperate with our country.

While communism collapsed in Russia, it sadly relocated and re-emerged in Latin America. The cancer captured Cuba in 1958, then spread through Central and South America. Cartels and gangs filled the power vacuum, and Bush 41’s arrest of Manuel Noriega barely stemmed the tide. Further south, Peronist socialism ruined Argentina for decades, and juntas furthered the political disorder and collapse of freedom on the continent.

Latin America drowned in a red tsunami of communism during the early 2000s, as well. Bolivia floundered under the collectivist tyranny of the Evo Morales, and other Latin American states struggled to stay afloat in the midst of socialist machinations.

Latin America looked done for. America could finish off the Soviet Union, but what could the United States do about our neighbors to the South? If Stalinist Cuba could withstand embargoes, and hostile states like Iran, Russia, and China could form working relationships to undermine the law of nations and public order across the globe, what hope was there that we could turn things around?

President Trump has made all the difference through a savvy foreign policy regime while putting America First. Unlike previous presidents, Republican and Democrat, President Trump made immigration enforcement a cornerstone of his domestic and foreign policy. The free ride of cheap labor was over. He halted the teeming masses of upset refugees throughout the Americas from invading our country.

The message became clear to southern partners, neighbors, and adversaries: “The answer to your problems in your country will not be solved by running to our country.” Without the safe haven of the United States, the citizens of Central and South America had to look inward and turn their own countries around. They had to make do with their situation and find a way to restore order in their countries.

Thus arose Nayib Bukele in 2019. The mayor of San Salvador, he campaigned for president with a new party with a bold, basic platform of restoring civility, shutting down the terrorist gangs and cartels. He defeated the establishment of both major parties and became a human savior for the nation of El Salvador, locking up the prisoners, restoring law and order, then inviting economic investment. Murder rates in the former crime capital of the world have declined immensely—and he just won re-election by massive margins.

Then Argentina voted for freedom in 2023. Having labored under unrelenting government intervention, Argentina’s crippling inflation and moral collapse drove voters to take a chance on wily libertarian economics professor, Javier Milei. Adopting Trump’s mission and messaging, Milei took a chainsaw to the state and “the caste” of political insiders. Today, inflation is crashing, jobs are growing, and law and order is being restored. The new rallying cry across the Land of Silver: Viva La Libertad, Carajo!

Milei credits Trump for his inspiration, and Trump 2.0 assisted Milei’s congressional elections in 2025 with a credit swap, which netted the United States massive gains and helped Milei gain power in Argentina’s Congress. He has passed effective economic reforms while cracking down on crime, stumping for life, family, and secured sovereignty.

Amazing!

And the MAGA-oriented right-wing shift has continued:

• In Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, a center-right businessman with a pro-security platform, took office, winning in late 2023 against leftist Luisa González. His successes netted him a re-election victory in 2025.
• In Panama, right-wing candidate José Raúl Mulino won in May 2024, focusing on security and the economy.
• In 2025, President Trump arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a swift, early-morning operation, accomplishing what previous administrations had promised. Maduro was arrested for rampant drug trafficking and terrorism. His successor has acquiesced to American diplomatic and business overtures while releasing political prisoners.
• In Bolivia, Christian right-wing contender Rodrigo Paz Pereira ended twenty years of communist rule under Evo “Evil” Morales. Whoever said that you cannot vote your way out of communism?
• In Chile, conservative Catholic José Antonio Kast won in late 2025 following a run-off, defeating a long-standing activist left-wing government which had sought to scrap Chile’s previous conservative reforms, including free market policies and school choice.
• Honduras: Nasry Asfura (right-wing National Party) won in late 2025, defeating a leftist incumbent's ally.
• Costa Rica: Laura Fernández Delgado (conservative/right-wing populist) won in February 2026. She campaigned aggressively on a pro-family platform, as well, denouncing the evils of abortion (just as Milei had done!)
• Peru: Keiko Fujimori, daughter of populist former President Alberto, just won in June 2026.
• In Colombia, another conservative Catholic, Abelardo de la Espriella, has replaced another left-wing narco-state-allied regime.

Look across Latin America today. The right is on the march, cleaning out the wreckage of socialism and communism. Free market reforms are ascending. Rejection of authoritarian regimes, recognition of the state of Israel, friendly concourse with the West, and en masse crackdowns on crime and corruption are redefining the region.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz offered a profound vision regarding the incredible political rightward shift washing across Latin America:

[I]f that happens, this would be the most consequential geopolitical shift since the fall of the Berlin Wall, since America won the Cold War without firing a shot.

Indeed, and Trump deserves credit for this transformation. He provided a successful campaign template focused on illegal immigration, national pride and sovereignty, focusing on economic growth and freedom while promoting traditional values. Trump endorsed many of the candidates listed above, as well, and has offered his support since their election victories.

Trump started the trend, set the standard, and Latin America is going right along with him.

Podcast thread for July 16

 

Game time.

Western Governments Have a Shelf Life

American Thinker 

Many Western governments will eventually collapse because they do not serve the interests of their peoples.  As a quick thought experiment, ask yourself what policy matters the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union consider most important.  

Based on what I hear from the speeches of Western politicians and what I see from Western mainstream media publications, I would include these issues near the top of any list: (1) fighting “climate change”; (2) encouraging the mass immigration of foreign nationals; (3) replacing Western civilization with “multiculturalism”; (4) branding national self-interest as “fascism”; (5) demonizing “white supremacy” while giving preferential treatment to those with “diversity” of skin color; (6) undermining nuclear families consisting of one mother, one father, and their children; (7) treating abortion-on-demand as “healthcare” and a “sacred” right; (8) treating assisted suicide as “healthcare” and a moral good; (9) celebrating homosexuality; (10) rejecting biological sex; (11) embracing pseudoscientific “transgenderism” that promotes the sterilization and bodily mutilation of young children; (12) central banking that manipulates the value of national currencies; (13) offshoring industrial and manufacturing firms to third-world, often adversarial nations; (14) disarming citizens; (15) spying on citizens; (16) criminalizing citizens’ public and private speech; (17) censoring online information; (18) mandating the dissemination of government propaganda; (19) criminalizing citizens’ Christian beliefs; (20) refusing to prosecute or imprison thieves, robbers, rapists, and murderers; (21) nationalizing health care while mandating experimental “vaccinations”; (22) instituting military conscription; (23) instigating foreign wars without the public’s consent; (24) promulgating endless bureaucratic rules and regulations without voters’ consent; (25) taxing citizens and confiscating their property without their consent.

These twenty-five issues are by no means exhaustive, but they capture an accurate snapshot of Western governments’ priorities.  In every instance, however, these policies either directly attack Western citizens or make their lives more difficult.  They represent a kind of public policy grimoire meant to undermine Western civilization.

Any reasonable person looking at the above list would agree that Western governments are sabotaging Western nations.  Western governments target Western citizens, Christianity, and the notion that Western civilization is worth preserving.  Concurrently, they encourage non-Western foreigners to move into Western nations without assimilating.  Non-Western foreigners are, therefore, replacing Western citizens.  Foreign languages and foreign cultures are replacing Western languages and Western cultures.  Foreign religions are replacing Christianity.  Foreign workers are replacing Western workers.  Foreign politicians are taking over Western governments.  

At the same time, Western governments encourage Western women to have abortions.  Western governments discourage the formation of strong, nuclear families.  Western governments promote homosexual and promiscuous lifestyles that limit childbirth and population growth.  Western governments make it more expensive to live by collecting carbon taxes, mandating costly “green energies,” and enforcing ever-more-restrictive “climate change” regulations.  Western governments use central banks to print and spend money that deflates the value of Western currency.  Western governments flood their nations with foreigners who increase the demand for (and therefore the price of) housing, energy, and food.  Western governments eliminate blue-collar jobs by offshoring entire domestic industries and then force unemployed Western citizens to depend upon government welfare.  Western governments endanger Western citizens by refusing to prosecute or imprison violent criminals who should not be on Western streets.  Western governments control medical care, and, therefore, government bureaucrats decide whether Western patients will live or die.  Western governments encourage impoverished, mentally ill, physically challenged, and old Western citizens to take advantage of government “healthcare” that helps them commit suicide.

This arrangement — whereby Western governments protect foreigners while endangering Westerners — is inexcusable.  However, should any Western citizens notice how maliciously Western governments behave or how insane Western policies have become, Western governments jump into action to silence the witnesses and censor their dissent.  Western financial institutions de-bank Westerners with “politically incorrect” beliefs.  Western social media monitors flag unapproved speech and sic Western “thought police” on unapproved speakers.  Western officials denounce Western citizens who wish to protect their nations as “fascists,” “Nazis,” and “racists.”  Meanwhile, Western governments work with Western corporations to monitor everything that citizens say or do.  Then the same Western governments that spew endless propaganda defaming their own citizens as “fascists” and “racists” roll out military drafts requiring them to fight against “fascism” and “racism” on foreign battlefields.  If Western governments can successfully send Western citizens off to fight and die in foreign wars, then foreign nationals will be the only people left in Western nations.  That’s when “Western” nations become foreign nations once and for all.

Putting all of this together, the natural question is not whether Western governments will one day collapse.  The question is which government will fall first?  Either Western citizens will grow tired of being abused and systematically eliminated, or foreign nationals will take over the operations of Western governments.  One way or the other, then, Western governments cannot survive on their current path.  

Unlike some naysayers, I have a great deal of confidence that the citizens of many Western nations will succeed in taking their countries back from those governments that wish them harm.  Although late to the show, it is clear that many Western citizens are finally aware that they have been under attack.  Right now we are in the “let’s see if elections can fix this” phase, wherein desperate Western citizens are hoping that a Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Alice Weidel, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump (all politicians whom Western governments and corporate news media demonize as “far-right”) will close national borders, restore Western sovereignty, protect Western civilization, and otherwise right the ship. 

In response, Western governments are doing everything they can to prevent these leaders from succeeding — including by defaming, persecuting, harassing, suing, and indicting them for make-believe “crimes.”  Should Western governments succeed in preventing Western citizens from electing leaders who will defend their nations from foreign conquest and self-sabotage, then Western citizens will move beyond the “elections fix” and begin to take their fight to the streets.  While Western governments are salivating over the prospect of sending their citizens off to die in an unnecessary war with the Russian Federation, many Western citizens have already concluded that there is no point in fighting authoritarianism in foreign lands when there is an onslaught of authoritarianism to fight at home.

In my estimation, Western governments are running out of opportunities to change course before they guarantee the rise of citizen backlash, rebellion, and civil war.  Western governments have disarmed Western citizens in order to make them feel impotent and weak.  However, moral certainty and righteous indignation have a way of arming the powerless.  When ten to twenty percent of a population decide that fighting tyranny is worth losing one’s life, it no longer matters who is armed or unarmed.  

Governments cannot survive just by spying on, persecuting, or killing citizens.  For governments to endure, they must maintain some modicum of legitimacy.  In this regard, Western citizens hold all the power.  The moment that they decide that their governments no longer represent their interests, Western citizens gain moral authority.  The moment that citizens decide that their governments are a threat to their security and well-being, Western governments are stamped with a shelf life.  The question for Western governments pursuing anti-Western policies is simple: How much time do they have left?

Leftist Women Are an Abomination

Townhall 

A 43-year-old Trump-hating American woman named Jamey Carney decided to move to Ireland to escape the Bad Orange Man’s reign of terror, shack up with her Palestinian asylum seeker boyfriend, and… well, that misadventure ended about as well as a sentence that begins “I thought the pitbull looked cute, so I petted it…” or “But I thought I could fly…” Spoiler Alert: Her Muslim dreamboat got mad at the uppity infidel and bludgeoned her to death. Who could’ve seen that coming except anybody with eyes? It’s kind of amazing how Darwinism results in a self-cleaning gene pool.

No, I would prefer that she had not been murdered by the semi-human, Third World savage she decided was a viable alternative to a nice, normal Western male, but my bandwidth of caring is necessarily limited. One can only genuinely care a finite amount; pretending to care endlessly and without limits is just moral posturing, of which there is far too much. That’s why one must carefully curate what he chooses to care about. Neither you nor I can possibly care about all the wrongs in the world, and we should not take some of that precious caring that would otherwise be devoted to someone who is not the architect of her own miserable fate and squander it on someone who is.

The point here is not the bad judgment of one dumb liberal woman from America. The point is the bad judgment of an enormous number of dumb liberal women from all over the West. These self-righteous crones are a pestilence, a plague upon Western society, a group of doggedly ignorant feminist/chauvinists playing out their personal psychodramas on the world stage whose antics, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to the fall of civilization.

Too extreme? Look around you at what’s going on. These creatures range from the ridiculous blue-haired faildaughters with gender studies degrees and a career in baristaing, to the gray-maned boomer women reeking of patchouli and sexual dissatisfaction at your local No Kings rally, to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who decided she needed to shut down Europe’s greatest economic power’s entire energy industry even as she was importing most of the Third World with utterly predictable rapey consequences. Just look at this lunatic who stands a significant chance of being a Senate nominee for a major political party. The patriarchy built a civilization; the mediocre matriarchy wants to tear it down out of guilt, boredom, and sexual frustration.

If you’re looking for policy that’s not just bad but civilization-shakingly bad, there’s a better-than-even chance there’ll be women-identifying women behind it. Orwell called it in "1984": “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” If it’s a bad idea, chances are there’s a chick behind it.

And that includes empowering the trans nonsense—do you think for a minute that dudes with the whole sausage shelf swinging would ever be allowed in women’s locker rooms if there weren’t significant numbers of high-status women demanding it? Do you imagine that the majority of men would refuse a majority of women who were demanding we exclude these perverts? Hell no—the guys would look at the women as if they were crazy, asking, “Wait, there are dudes doing what?” and out would come the torches n’ pitchforks. But, in fact, it’s women who demand that these creeps be allowed to invade women’s intimate spaces and women who demand that these mutants dominate women’s sports. Not all women, but enough high-status and influential ones to make it happen. Remember, the only thing these broken women hate more than men is unbroken women.

This is the cue for critics to whine and complain because I’m talking about the specific and particular failures of women. Remember, we must pretend that every specific group, except straight white dudes who believe in Jesus and normal genders, each provides its own wonderful and unique attributes to the beautiful tapestry that is diversity. And yet, while we’re required to pretend that each group has uniquely compelling good points, even where the evidence demonstrates to the contrary, we’re also required to pretend that none of them has uniquely compelling negative points. Well, when women screw up, they often screw up in a uniquely female way. And, at the risk of being called a sexist oppressor even harder than usual—because they’re always going to call you a sexist oppressor—that’s the truth, and it’s irrelevant that some feminist doxie cries when she hears it.

Now, of course, men also screw up in their own uniquely compelling male ways. Take what just happened in Maine. We have both Herr Oystergruppenführer, a guy who appears almost as a parody of toxic masculinity, as well as the up-talking femboy socialist consultant who thought that this was just the guy to take on that fascist demon Susan Collins. Maybe he thought that a red flag was a good thing; after all, he was a communist. But the subject at hand is women and how women screw up, and women do screw up even if saying so ticks off the girlbosses. At the individual level, we see how Platneresque convicts on death row are often inundated with mash notes from women on the outside. When they finally get led over to Old Sparky, you always read about how the wife they married while in prison sobbed to the reporter about how their three-named monster hubby was really a wonderful and gentle soul, totally oblivious to the four people he chopped up with an axe after robbing them for $12.

The unfortunate Jamey Carney is akin to these nitwits. She was living in New York and the mother of a 13-year-old daughter, but then Trump came along, and she was so mad at him that she decided to move to the Emerald Isle. At a Palestinian protest, of course, she met Ahmad Al-Saqar, a 28-year-old dude also living in Ireland—on the dole, naturally—and they fell in love. Well, she fell in love. He beat her brains out around July 7-8. Gee, how could this fairytale romance have gone so wrong?

Writ larger, she was one of those ridiculous ladies who stand there with a sign that says, “Refugees Welcome,” demanding that even more perverted Third World peasants flood her country. Like gays for Palestine, it’s a societal suicide pact that they somehow think they’re exempt from. The numbers are undeniable. The majority of rapes in Europe are linked to migrants, even though they make up less than 10 percent of the population in many countries. But does that stop liberal women? No, it probably encourages them. Oh, I don’t think they want to be raped and beaten to death personally, but I think that they believe, at some level, that members of their own society deserve that fate. They believe their societies are evil, which naturally makes them the heroines in the young adult novel that is their lives, and they’re trying to atone for it by this ritual humiliation and sacrifice.

You see this all the time, with ridiculous lefty women demanding that we defund the police and close prisons while female judges sentence violent psychopaths to probation. They cast it as mercy and grace, but it’s not. They’re seeking to punish the rest of us for the sins they have adjudicated us guilty of committing as a society. In other words, they know full well the damage they’re doing. It’s intentional. It’s penance. Some, like Carney, have convinced themselves that their advocacy for the destruction of their own society will give them a free pass. They simply don’t understand that the foreigners they adore as the avengers of all the myriad wrongs they attribute to their own society hold them, correctly, in utter contempt.

Ahmad Al-Saqar always despised the late Ms. Carney for her weakness and stupidity, just like these savages always despise their Western cheerleaders for their weakness and stupidity. When she annoyed him, he murdered her because that’s what happens in his garbage culture. Ms. Carney could not conceive of that because she grew up in a civilized culture, one created, ordered, and defended by the kind of strong American males she holds in such contempt. It’s only in such a society that she and the other liberal wine women so despise that her brand of ideological frivolity cannot merely survive, but flourish. Yet, as soon as they encounter the barbarians outside the gate that she and her friends want to cast open to the invaders, they are suddenly outside the protection they have known all their lives. They can act the fool while people they hate watch over them and protect them, but once they put themselves in a position where the men of the West can’t protect them anymore, they are subject to all the consequences of their choices. And that’s why Jamey Carney is dead.

It’s sad for her, but it’s infinitely sadder for our society as a whole. Again, we have only a finite amount of sincere caring allocated to us. At some point, people need to learn not to put their hands on the stove. Yet they’re happy to risk being burned as long as the rest of us go up in flames. For that reason, we should devote the same amount of sincere caring to her and her ilk as they devote to us.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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Smooth Sailing Ahead for DNI Nominee Jay Clayton

Conservative Treehouse 

One thing is obvious from today, the SSCI want Jay Clayton confirmed as DNI.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a quick, one-round, nomination hearing for Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton.  The entire event lasted just under two hours with little room for controversy. It should be smooth sailing from here.

Other than a little faux resistance from SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, the nomination hearing was otherwise unremarkable.  You can always tell the position of the Intelligence Community by the positioning of their enabling structure within the SSCI.  No worries ahead for Clayton.

The committee may organize a party line vote so that Democrats can maintain their resistance bona fides, but in a general sense it’s all optics during the downhill glide to the nomination.  That said, what this means in the larger picture of the USIC system during the Trump administration is yet to be determined.

Obviously FISA (702) reauthorization will likely be attached by Senate Majority Leader John Thune into a legislative package for a companion vote.  The SSCI and larger Senate chamber all support Clayton and FISA (702), though there may be some optics of resistance from positional republicans.

It seems pretty clear that Acting DNI Bill Pulte was put in place by the White House to stay on through the release of election-related material planned for Thursday night. This move keeps DNI Clayton away from any fallout tied to the 2020 election investigation, and if the White House can pull off a presidential presentation that grabs public attention, Clayton could step into the role later with a mandate to dig into the details of the release without being directly linked to it.

The second aspect is yet another motive for fast DNI confirmation by an SSCI apparatus that really doesn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of foreign activity in the 2020 election.

ADNI Bill Pulte and SGE John Solomon are now positioned to have one shot at grabbing political attention framed around the fraudulent 2020 election outcome on Thursday night.  Soon thereafter, Clayton will take the reins at DNI and continue the goal of removing politics from the activity of the larger Intelligence Community.

A Former Clinton Advisor Is Warning Democrats About the Looming Communist Takeover

Townhall 

While Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, are warning Americans about the dangers of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), it seems few Democrats are making the same statements publicly. But Al Mottur, a former advisor to Hillary Clinton, is warning his fellow Democrats of the socialist takeover.

"These people, they're not crazy, they're ideologues. They don't love America, let me say that," said Mottur. "A lot of these people do not love America and I'm not team Democrat, I'm team America. And if we have people in our party who are so far Left, that they are saying we don't want to protect people from crime, well, that's just absurd. And, by the way, we're not going to win a national election, let alone an election in Michigan, if that's our position."

He's correct.

Perhaps. But even then, we've seen some women say they didn't report their rapists because the rapist was black and they didn't want to be racist.

What they would do is turn things that are not crimes—like speaking out against communism—into crimes and jail people for ungoodthink.

This is not a surprise to anyone who was paying attention.

Bingo. The DSA say out loud what the Democrats think.

They made this bed, now lie in it.

The DSA said its end goal is full-blown communism.

Democrat Senator Wants ICE Agents To Choose Between Getting Run Over And Going To Jail

Sen. Padilla suggested that officers whose lives are put at risk by agitators or illegals should automatically be fired for acting in self-defense.

The Federalist

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., on Wednesday called for the firing and prosecution of federal immigration enforcement officers who defend themselves against people who weaponize their cars and end up dead because of it.

During the confirmation hearing of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been nominated for the permanent position, Padilla opened by asking about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Texas and Maine shooting two illegal aliens. The illegal aliens allegedly refused to comply with the officers, instead dangerously fleeing the scene in one case, and attempting to ram into officers in the other, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Padilla initially asked whether Blanche thought state and local law enforcement should be involved in independent investigations regarding federal officer-involved shootings, and then suggested that the Department of Justice should have a role in investigating such cases at DHS. But he quickly pivoted to suggesting that officers whose lives are put at risk by agitators or illegals should automatically be fired for acting in self-defense.

“Here’s the bottom line: Why I’m asking these two questions, because in prior incidents — you referenced Minnesota earlier in your testimony — Alex Pretti and Renee Good were also fatally shot, and as far as we can tell, it’s been months and months,” Padilla said. “There’s been no justice in these cases. As far as I can tell, those officers were not fired, they have not faced any charges. So it does undermine any confidence anybody should have in the Department of Homeland Security’s ability, through the Inspector General or otherwise, to investigate its own.”

Blanche responded, stating, “I very much disagree with the statement you just made. The mere passage of time between January and today doesn’t mean there’s no justice.”

In all four cases, available evidence points to each person refusing to comply with lawful orders of federal agents, and in every case making extremely dangerous decisions that appear to span from the direct targeting of police officers with their vehicles, to putting them and others at risk by fleeing, or in Pretti’s case, obstructing law enforcement officers and then resisting.

As DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated Wednesday, “As our officers carry out operations to enforce our nations laws, they are facing a more than 1,300% increase in vehicle attacks.”

Pretti’s case is the only one that did not involve alleged weaponization or reckless use of a vehicle, and it included a confusing and chaotic timeline of events involving his carrying of a gun and an officer apparently believing he was reaching for it while another officer was removing it from his person.

Even so, that does not automatically condemn the officer who shot him, as Padilla would apparently have it, or even suggest that the officer will be found to have improperly discharged his weapon, given the circumstances of Pretti’s confrontation.

When Padilla claims that “what we have seen is people continuing to die, not just in detention facilities, but on the streets of America,” he is leaving out the fact that Democrats encourage these people to put themselves in dangerous situations where their agitation dramatically increases the chances of a deadly confrontation.

As my colleague Eddie Scarry points out, “Deportations are only deadly because of Democrat resistance.” Left-wing agitators are willing to give their lives to protect rapists and murderers from justice.

The anti-immigration law agitation is coordinated, too. As The Federalist reported, many illegal aliens are coached on how to resist police, and the American agitators shielding them are part of a unified network.

Mullin pointed to more examples of this:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a webinar providing tips for illegal aliens to evade arrests at homes, workplaces, or in public.

Dan Goldman posted a video online calling on illegal aliens to make a plan for ICE encounters.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued multilingual flyers and online resources advising illegal aliens on how to evade arrest.   

California Governor Gavin Newsom released guides and sanctuary laws advising illegal aliens how to recognize ICE, block entry, and defy arrest.

Despite a moment Tuesday where Mullin appeared to cave to the mob, legitimizing leftist agitator tactics by blocking all ICE officers from using traffic stops — their most important enforcement tool — President Donald Trump put the department back on track, and appears to now have zero appetite for allowing the left to control mass deportation.

“Our #1 goal is to keep our officers safe and get criminals OFF our streets. Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are. If you are here illegally, LEAVE NOW,” Mullin said. “We remind illegal aliens attempting to evade arrest is dangerous. This reckless illegal alien activity comes after sanctuary politicians held webinars and shared resources for how to openly defy [ICE].”

Deportations Are Only Deadly Because Of Democrat Resistance

A majority of Americans said they wanted these people out of their country. 

If Democrats believed in elections, they would have respected that choice, 

but they don’t. So things have naturally turned violent.

The Federalist 

Two more people died in recent days encountering immigration authorities, which predictably means a renewed enthusiastic push by Democrats and the dying media to halt deportations altogether. The only acceptable message from the Trump administration is: Those who caused this mess don’t get a say in how to clean it up.

It’s not a good sign that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday reportedly instructed law enforcement to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops” in relation to immigration enforcement. Any action that carries the whiff of a suggestion that the problem isn’t the nearly 20 million illegal aliens in this country — allowed in by Democrats — but rather the attempt to remove them is precisely the wrong signal.

At this stage, there is no “non-urgent” deportation, whether the subject is driving, walking, swimming, or floating in a hot air balloon. If he or she is in view of an ICE agent, there should be no pause in taking the individual into custody and processing his quick removal from the U.S. Anything else is weakness. Mullin is signaling weakness, and it reflects directly on President Trump.

That another two people were just killed while the administration tries to enforce immigration law isn’t a reason to stop. On Monday, 26-year-old Colombian man Joan Sebastian Guerrero was shot in Biddeford, Maine, after he attempted to flee from a traffic stop executed by immigration authorities, according to ICE. The agency said that, “fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon” and Guerrero died. Similarly, in Houston last week, Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was also shot and killed during a traffic stop conducted by immigration law enforcement. ICE said in a statement that Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle” and that authorities shot him in an act of self-defense.

There have yet to surface any publicly available videos that clearly depict what happened in either case. But if events unfolded as they have in previous high-profile run-ins with ICE, then what likely took place was an attempt by law enforcement to execute a traffic stop, only to be met by a subject who attempts to flee, perhaps by flooring it in his vehicle.

It can’t be said enough. Attempting to evade law enforcement or resist arrest is dangerous and can prove deadly. Contrary to what Democrats and people on CNN and MS NOW like to say, it’s not a matter of just letting a criminal suspect escape so that no one gets hurt. If that were the case, authorities would only ever be able to detain those who comply. In any event, resisting arrest and attempting to flee is not a safety threat exclusive to the police and the suspects. It’s a danger to any innocent person who might be in the vicinity, including children walking home from school or trying to cross the street.

That any ICE agent is ever faced with the choice of either drawing his weapon to neutralize a potential threat or withdrawing in hopes that nobody gets hurt is the fault of Democrats (and even some pro-amnesty Republicans) who have instigated and exacerbated every immigration problem the administration was put in place to solve. Democrats, with no right, told every destitute foreigner south of Texas to make his way to the U.S. and stay indefinitely. Democrats have since fought tooth and nail to keep each and every one of them here, refusing to cooperate with federal immigration officials and stirring up chaos in major cities to make it as difficult as possible for agents to do their jobs.

A majority of Americans said they wanted these people out of their country. If Democrats believed in elections, they would have respected that choice, but they don’t. So things have naturally turned violent. They can’t be allowed to hold this country hostage in that way. If violent deportations are what they’re forcing, so be it.