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Friday, July 17, 2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Delivers Remarkable Speech on Resurgence of Political Terrorism
Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted an event with various governments for a Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. The event focused on the reemergence of this threat to society and encourages stronger joint action to reinforce frontline defenses and close the gaps the terrorist actors continue to exploit.
As part of the State Department effort, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a remarkable speech to the audience. Within his remarks Rubio outlines the history of left-wing violence and lists current examples of how dangerous this has become. In many ways this is the anti-Obama speech that has long been needed.
This is a moment that can reset how we view terrorism in the 21st century, shifting from a terror-threat focus from Islamic extremism to the more pervasive threat from left-wing political violence. WATCH:
STATE DEPT – […] Far-left political terrorism is resurgent, manifesting in violent terrorist acts across the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia and beyond. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a deliberate, ideologically motivated strategy to destabilize free societies by violently targeting our political and economic systems, including attacks against private citizens, government officials, police and law enforcement, businesses, and critical infrastructure around the globe. For too long, however, this threat has remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus, underestimated and under-resourced, despite the danger it poses.
The United States is taking a leading role in countering far-left terrorism. Since November 2025, the United States has designated four violent far-left groups — Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense — as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as well as offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the disruption of the financial mechanisms of these same four organizations.
In recent months, the United States engaged also law enforcement, counterterrorism professionals, and prosecutors around the globe through direct engagements, as well as the inaugural Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Workshop (CTLEW) in May 2026, which convened 14 countries for a two-day, practitioner-focused workshop to exchange best practices for countering the threat of transnational far-left terrorism.
This Ministerial builds on that foundation, bringing together partners from across the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Asia to expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms to counter the threat. Secretary Rubio will highlight the importance of deepening cooperation with international partners to better map violent activity, disrupt terrorist financing, protect critical infrastructure, and promote collective action against a threat that respects no borders. {SOURCE}
New Homeland Security Rule to Crack Down on Foreign Visitors Who Just Refuse to Leave US
Legally entering and living in the United States, sometimes years at a time, is a privilege, not a right. That's something that foreigners are learning isn't taken lightly with President Trump back in the White House since Jan. 2025. And on Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to crack down on those visitors who just refuse to leave.
For decades, foreign students have been admitted into the U.S. for an unspecified period, enabling thousands to abuse the system and become “forever students” by perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid leaving our nation.
By implementing clear, finite limits on these visas, the United States is reclaiming its ability to properly screen, vet, and monitor individuals within our borders.
The new limits on foreign visa holders would not affect only foreign students, though:
The Trump administration moved on Thursday to tighten the duration of visas for foreign students, cultural exchange visitors and journalists.
The new final rule from the Department of Homeland Security creates a fixed time period for F visas for international students, J visas that allow visitors on cultural exchange programs to work in the U.S., and I visas for members of the media. Those visas are currently available for the duration of the program or employment in the U.S.
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Under the new regulations, the student and exchange visa periods would be no longer than four years. The visa for journalists - which currently can last years - would be up to 240 days or, in the case of Chinese nationals, 90 days.
That last part drew some grumbling from Chinese officials in Aug. 2025 when the rules were proposed, which they called "discriminatory," according to the Reuters story linked above. Now, here's how those on foreign visas could remain stateside, under the new regulations:
Visa holders who want to stay in the United States beyond their fixed period of admission will need to apply to DHS for an extension or gain readmission by traveling abroad and then re-entering the United States, DHS said.
As we also saw earlier on Thursday, DHS announced it would be resuming traffic stops by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with a slight adjustment in how it's done.
The administration said that graduate students from overseas were a major stumbling block in keeping track of who is inside the U.S., some of whom would stay for "decades":
The regulations prohibit graduate students from changing their "educational objectives" at any point or from transferring to another school without authorization. They halve the amount of time students have to leave the United States after completing their degree or training from 60 to 30 days.
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The department cited a dramatic rise in such visas in the posting. It said there were more than 1.8 million student visa admissions in 2024, a more than 11% increase over the previous year.
The U.S. granted visas to more than 500,000 exchange visitors and 37,300 members of the media in fiscal year 2024, which began on October 1, 2023, it said.
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DHS said it has many examples of students and exchange visitors staying for decades on their visas.
What's the next step? Congress will need to review and approve the new DHS policies.
Trump Declassifies Election Documents: Here's What We Know So Far
A large number of declassified documents were released following President Donald Trump’s national address on elections on Thursday night.
While there are plenty of documents to sift through, there are a handful of declassified memorandums from the federal government that circulated warnings on the potential for foreign interference.
One of the key memorandums, from the National Intelligence Council in January 2020, disclosed that “we assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results.”
“The systems in each voting location are not connected to the Internet or to each other, and many methods for exploiting them rely on physical proximity,” the memorandum stated.
“Although an adversary could manipulate voting results across multiple jurisdictions and enough states to influence a presidential election, we judge that conducting such a campaign would be difficult and that post-election audits and paper trails very likely would uncover such an effort,” it added.
The same memorandum titled “Vulnerabilities in US 2020 Election Infrastructure” said that the council notes “that US adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as nonstate groups, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure for the 2020 presidential election.”
“Adversaries gaining access to US election-related systems could disrupt the voting process, steal sensitive data, or undermine confidence in the election results, but we do not know whether any of them have specific plans to manipulate election-related systems,” the memorandum continued.
On China, one declassified document from an unnamed “sensitive government agency” stated that “ahead of the 2020 Presidential Elections, China had extensive plans to utilize potential [redacted] and cyber operations to sway public opinion against the Trump Administration and international opinion against the U.S. Government.”
“The China plans were designed to exploit U.S. societal fissures and vulnerabilities. to influence U.S and other audiences, and by extension U.S. government decision-making. The plans addressed several scenarios, including military conflict between the U.S. and China, as well as other potential crises,” the summarizing document added.
Meanwhile, an August 2020 assessment from the aforementioned intelligence council said that “we assess that China prefers that the President--whom Beijing sees as unpredictable and tough on China-does not win reelection.”
“We assess that hostile actors could also manipulate systems that count or tabulate votes such as voting machines-on a localized basis, but it probably would be difficult to coordinate a campaign to alter voting results on a wide scale,” the August assessment noted.
“Post-election audits and paper trails also most likely would uncover such efforts in the nearly all US states. Similarly, foreign actors would have difficulty coordinating a large scale campaign to manipulate mail-in voting, and robust postal tracking probably would detect any large-scale effort,” the assessment continued.
On the president’s statements regarding noncitizens on voter rolls, a Department of Homeland Security document released in the dump on Thursday night claims that “over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in just the four states for which public data files have been reviewed.”
This does not necessarily mean those individuals registered actually voted in an election, but DHS argues that “states that have adopted alien-first policies instead of American-first policies have a disproportionate number of non-citizens on their voter rolls.”
Following initial publication, Townhall also noticed that many of the documents regarding China are heavily redacted. However, a declassified CIA Note with the subject "Senitive PRC Reporting from 2018-2020" points out that "in mid-2019, the Chinese Government's strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. President.
"The strategy included efforts to use Chinese contracts with big U.S. companies to influence U.S. business leaders to turn against the U.S. President," the note stated. "The Chinese Government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. President and pay them to write more negative articles about him. The Chinese Government wanted the U.S. President to lose the next election."
Canadians Perplexed – Mark Carney Hires American Political Operative as Chief Operations Officer
Previously, Mark Carney and the Canadian govt famously fired Air Canada’s CEO because he shamefully didn’t speak French. This week he hired American, Maia Johnson, as his Chief Operations Officer (COO), she also doesn’t speak French and the Canadians are perplexed.
Hired by Prime Minister Mark Carney, the role of Democrat party operative and former Michael Bloomberg associate, Maia Johnson, seems directly related to the strategy of leveraging U.S. Democrat resistance against the CUSMA (USMCA) termination.
[Note: Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg connect through their banking and finance network with prior associations. This relationship also connects to U.K Mayor Andy Burnham who is likely to become the next U.K Prime Minister to replace Keir Starmer.]
Readers to CTH likely remember in 2018 former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leveraged Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi to regain position in the USMCA negotiations (NAFTA elimination) with USTR Robert Lighthizer.
It appears that Carney is attempting a similar maneuver through the connections of Democrat operative Maia Johnson.
Specifically, because positioning American resistance to the CUSMA (USMCA) termination is a key part of the Carney strategy, a COO from U.S. Democrat politics is the best strategic approach. A Canadian in that role would be of far lesser value.
TORONTO SUN – […] This week, it was reported that Carney was promoting a woman unknown to most Canadians to the position of chief operating officer in the PMO.
It appears to be a first for Canada to have a COO in the PMO, but it’s who the woman is that is truly interesting.
Maia Johnson is currently listed in the government employee directory as Carney’s “Senior Advisor, United States Stakeholder Strategy.” That sounds like a job for someone at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, not someone working on Wellington St. in Ottawa.
This is where it gets really interesting, though, because Johnson, the woman advising Carney on how to deal with Donald Trump, is an American and a registered Democrat with ties to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
In what world does it make sense for Johnson to be a senior advisor on Canada-U.S. relations, never mind be elevated to the position of chief operating officer of Canada’s PMO? (more)