December 12, 2025 Insider Report

Is America Becoming More Affordable?

“LOWER PRICES”— “BIGGER PAYCHECKS.” That’s what the signs said when President Donald Trump held a rally on December 10 in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, to celebrate his economic policies. And that is the message he delivered.

“I have no higher priority than making America affordable again,” Trump said. “They caused the high prices, and we’re bringing them down.”

According to Trump, his policies are making “America affordable again,” despite Democrats’ claims to the contrary — claims he calls a hoax. “They say, ‘Oh, he [Trump] doesn’t realize prices are high,’” Trump said. “Prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is ‘affordability.’” Later in his speech, Trump said, “They say, ‘affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No, our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country.”

As Trump sees it, he inherited a disaster — including high prices — from the Democrats but is quickly getting America back on track again. As he wound up his remarks, he said, “Together, we’re repairing four years of disaster by the Radical Left Democrats in Congress and by [President Biden]…. After just 10 months, our border is secure, our spirit is restored, inflation is stopped, wages are up, prices are down…. And the United States is back.”

But, looking at the economic part of his message, has inflation been stopped, have prices come down, and have wages gone up? Obviously some prices have gone down, but how about overall? Also, have wages gone up sufficiently to offset the overall increase in the cost of goods in services? Many American consumers would obviously disagree that prices have come down overall, based on their own experiences in the marketplace when they buy groceries or a new car.

Regarding inflation, it continues to ravage the economy, despite Trump’s claim that it has been stopped. Properly understood, inflation is an increase in the money supply. That increase dilutes the value of the money already in circulation, putting upward pressure on prices — in much the same way that handing out extra money to all the players in a Monopoly game would cause the bids for properties to go up. Inflation is continuing because the federal government is spending trillions of dollars that it is not collecting in taxes, and those trillions are being monetized by the Fed in the form of new dollars being pumped into the economy. And as president, Trump has supported raising the national debt limit trillions of dollars to accommodate the continuing spendathon.

This is not to say that Trump is the problem. Of course not! The Democrats too have been big spenders and big borrowers. But in order to slay inflation, the U.S. government must start living within its means. The way to accomplish that is not by raising taxes, but by shrinking government. And the way to shrink government is to get back to the Constitution, the document that every president and every member of the House and Senate, whether Republican or Democratic, swears to uphold. — Gary Benoit

**Comrade Cora Weiss Dies, New York Times Glorifies Her in Obit — as Expected**

One thing you can count on: The New York Times’ obituary section will never waste an opportunity to vilify a real hero — or glorify a real villain. Cora Rubin Weiss has not, in recent years, commanded the headlines that she once did, but those with memories long enough will recall that during her “glory years” (1960s through 1980s) she was not only the darling of communist North Vietnam’s mass-murdering dictator Ho Chi Minh, but also the crusading championess of Soviet “peace” propaganda. “Hanoi Jane” Fonda may have achieved more infamy by her pilgrimage to North Vietnam and lying about how our tortured POWs were being royally treated, but Cora Weiss was far more deeply involved in this treachery and treason, and for a much longer period of time, than her famous Hollywood comrade. Along with her husband, Peter Weiss, Cora helped found and lead a host of far-far-left organizations, movements, and coalitions, many of which were closely tied to the Communist Party USA, the Soviet KGB, and the Cuban secret police, the DGI. Many of these organizations are still with us, actively promoting the same pro-communist agendas. Foremost among these are the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Transnational Institute (TI).

Naturally, the Times covers up this perfidy in its glowing December 8 encomium titled “Cora Weiss, Lifelong Champion of Social Justice, Dies at 91.” Yes, according to the Times, she was an admirable “Lifelong Champion of Social Justice,” not a traitor and barely disguised crypto-communist. The Times does mention her leadership in Women Strike for Peace and the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, but gives readers unfamiliar with the era no clue whatsoever as to the hardcore pro-communist, anti-American nature of the groups. It also fails to note her slavish devotion to advancing communist regimes, communist causes, and the communist/globalist world-government agenda through the United Nations. Over the past decades, we have exposed her subversive activities in numerous articles in The New American, as well as its predecessor publications American Opinion and The Review of The News.

In a July 4, 2000 report for The New American, for instance, William Norman Grigg bared Cora Weiss’ role at the UN Millennium Forum, as leader of the Hague Appeal for Peace. Grigg noted:

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) — the nerve center of America’s globalist elite — Weiss is the daughter of Samuel Rubin, a longtime member of the Communist Party, U.S.A., and the head of a tax-exempt foundation that bears her father’s name. The Samuel Rubin Foundation is the chief financial angel behind the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C. “think-tank” connected to the Soviet KGB; Cora Weiss’ husband Peter is IPS chairman. She was among the pro-North Vietnam fifth columnists who undertook a pilgrimage to Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

Cora Weiss (née Rubin) was a privileged “red diaper baby” who grew up in a wealthy family of revolutionaries. Her parents, Samuel and Vera Rubin, were early members of the Communist Party USA. Despite that, Samuel used the opportunities afforded him in the hated “capitalist” United States to amass a cosmetics fortune through the Faberge Perfumes company, which he founded in the 1930s. Cora’s mother, Dr. Vera Rubin, was an anthropologist who, among other things, served the revolutionary cause by promoting the illegal drug culture. Vera was prominently featured as a pro-marijuana “expert” in the June 1978 issue of High Times, the counterculture magazine that has been a leading champion of legalizing all “recreational” narcotics.

The Times obit features a photo of a young Cora Weiss “at a news conference in New York City in 1972 with David Dellinger, center, the co-chairman of the Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam, and the Rev. William Sloan Coffin Jr., a Yale chaplain.” Some background information neglected by the Times would be helpful. Dr. Roger Canfield’s incredibly detailed three-volume work Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam against the Common Enemy — America provides hundreds of citations showing the absolutely treasonous activities of Weiss, Dellinger, Coffin, et al., especially involving their despicable tormenting of American POWs and POW families by pressuring them to make propaganda statements and by lying about the brutal treatment our POWs were subjected to by Weiss’ communist comrades.

Weiss and Dellinger were among the trusted few whom the communist Hanoi regime chose to select sympathetic American visitors that could be relied on to retail the Party Line. Canfield writes:

Subject to the approval of the North Vietnamese, favored antiwar leaders such as Tom Hayden, David Dellinger and Cora Rubin Weiss selected all visitors from the U.S., insuring that only those Americans who could be counted on to return to the US to pass on uncritically Hanoi war propaganda. They willingly described horrific napalming of innocent civilians and the intentionally repeated bombing of hospitals, cemeteries, schools, churches and pagodas. Denied a visa, novelist and WWII veteran James Jones wrote, “The North Viets were notoriously selfish about visas” giving them “to people like Jane Fonda, Wilfred Burchett and Mary McCarthy, people already strongly on their side, thus harvesting bumper crops of unabashed propaganda from each seedling.” Most came back, unaware or willfully blind to how choreographed their hospitality had been, thoroughly charmed, deceived, tearful and angry. Almost all were thereafter committed to a Vietnamese Communist victory over U.S. imperialism.

So enthralled with the Hanoi Reds was Comrade Cora that she published the English translation of communist General Van Tien Dung’s memoir, Our Great Spring Victory. Canfield explains:

In 1976 Cora Weiss acquired the English language copyright of General Dung’s Our Great Spring Victory, an account of how Communist Hanoi conquered the South. “Our victory also springs from many causes [including] the help of the fraternal socialist countries and our friends around the world.

The Cora Weiss litany of infamy goes on and on. Take the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (popularly known as New Mobe). To go by the Times account, the outfit was an idealistic “peace” outfit. Canfield capably destroys that narrative. Ditto for Women Strike for Peace (WSP). If you want another comprehensive source on Weiss, Dellinger, New Mobe, WSP, et al., see “Subversive Involvement in the Origin, Leadership, and Activities of the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and Its Predecessor Organizations,” a 103-page report produced in 1970 by the Committee on Internal Security of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Cora Weiss/Peter Weiss/Samuel Rubin revolutionary trail is also exposed in The War Called Peace: The Soviet Peace Offensive, published in 1982 by Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald’s Western Goals Foundation, shortly before McDonald (D-Ga.) was infamously shot down aboard a commercial Korean Airlines flight (KAL 007) by Soviet fighter jets.

Cora’s husband, Peter Weiss, who lived to be 99 and preceded her in death by several weeks, likewise received lionizing eulogies in the Orwellian lie machine, otherwise known as our Deep State regime media. We are not surprised. — William F. Jasper

Trump’s National Security Strategy “Justifies” Foreign Intervention

The Trump administration’s recently released National Security Strategy provides a window into how the president and his team think about domestic and foreign policy. On an encouraging note, this administration rightly diagnoses Europe’s self-destructive trajectory. However, it appears to have fallen into the neoconservative foreign-policy trap. The strategy also provides further insight into President Donald Trump’s mediation efforts in Ukraine.

When it comes to America’s foreign policy, the administration recognizes that it’s been a disaster. Unfortunately, they see it as a disaster that unintentionally went awry, as opposed to one that was deliberately designed to be self-destructive. “Our elites … overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex,” the document says.

And while the administration admits that America’s Framers were noninterventionists, it doesn’t believe that approach is practical today. “For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible,” the document explains. Nevertheless, the Framers’ nonintervention prescription “should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.”

The strategy, assuming it will be a true determiner of policy, is far from perfect. It’s not what constitutionalists want. And, in certain respects, it’s not America First, no matter how much Trump declares it so. But it’s better than what we saw from Joe Biden’s rogue administration — or what would’ve come out of a Kamala Harris presidency, without a doubt. On foreign policy, it flies in the face of what George Washington prescribed. But at least it recognizes that a world war between Russia and Europe is in no one’s best interest.

The document does well to recognize Europe’s suicidal trajectory. Some Eurocrats have already shot back, saying they don’t need “outside advice.” Maybe not, but they certainly want outside military help while they stoke a war with Russia.

In essence, the strategy confirms what we have seen since February. This is an administration that is part neocon, part America First; an administration that seeks to prevent World War III in Europe yet fails to understand the true nature of the transnational organizations that have brought us to the brink; and an administration that thinks the best way to keep its hemisphere safe is by policing it.

The above is part of an article by Paul Dragu. To see the entire article at TheNewAmerican.com, click here.

U.S. Army Plans Mineral Refineries for National Security

As China has long monopolized rare earths and other minerals, the U.S. military is planning small-scale refineries to ensure supplies of critical minerals for defense purposes.

“The U.S. military said it plans to develop a fleet of small-scale refineries to produce critical minerals used to make bullets, armor and other types of weaponry, a move aimed at developing domestic sources for niche materials,” reports Reuters.

The U.S. Army is teaming up with the Idaho National Laboratory and mining company Perpetua Resources, and backing their plans are J.P. Morgan Chase (a financial institution that was instrumental in setting up the Federal Reserve System in 1913), and John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund manager, Trump booster, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Army plans antimony as its pilot mineral. Antimony is used to make the explosive primers on the base of cartridges, and has not been produced in this country for more than half a century. China cornered the market but in 2021 stopped exporting it. Our military was stuck with a one-year stockpile. Oops.

The Army’s refinery program has already spent $30 million developing the project. Its refinery “can produce 7 to 10 metric tons [of antimony] annually” — enough to “supply the Army during peacetime.” For war, the program can quickly expand by exploiting Perpetua’s Idaho mine, according to a department munitions procurement advisor interviewed by Reuters.

If efforts with antimony prove successful, tungsten, rare earths, and boron will follow. These are also used in munitions manufacturing as well as other military applications and semiconductors.

There is a lot of talk about critical minerals these days. The United States recently added silver and copper to the list of those vital to national security. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Caleb Orr met this week with the president of Zambia to discuss “critical mineral supply chains.”

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump, the inaugural chair of the United Nations’ “Board of Peace,” signed a “massive critical minerals deal” last week when he met with leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, reputedly ending a 30-year conflict between the two nations.

“These are just two of the many new agreements related to mineral supplies that my administration has achieved this year, including with Australia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and South Korea, and many other countries,” Trump told reporters.

Hot war on the horizon? — Rebecca Terrell

“Making a Killing”: Exposing the Big Lie About the Canadian Residential Indian School Graves

Certainly one of the most egregious examples of serial lying and deceit by the “mainstream” media is the massive campaign to whip up hatred against the Catholic Church and against “white colonialism” over alleged atrocities committed in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools during the past century. Beginning in 2021, the world began seeing a torrent of stories alleging that hundreds of graves of Indian children had been discovered at sites all over Canada. We were told — over and over again — that these children were victims of mental abuse, cruel torture, sex abuse, neglect, and murder. Many of these schools were run by the Catholic Church. As expected, outrage followed. Churches were burned down. Dozens of them. Many more have been vandalized.

But the outrage was built on a lie. A Big Lie. After all the horrendous headlines and media hyperventilating, it turns out that not a single child grave has been produced by the excavations. This is another Christophobic hate campaign aimed at demonizing Christianity in general and the Catholic Church more specifically, as the largest representative of the Christian faith community.

Now, thankfully, the record is being set straight. A new documentary, Making a Killing, rips the mask off of the hate-campaign mongers. It was produced by Dallas Brodie, an attorney, media personality, and member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. She is the founder of OneBC, a British Columbia political party. The full documentary has been put up for free viewing on YouTube. Canada’s Rebel News has highlighted the film (see here), and we will be featuring more in-depth coverage of this media-instigated atrocity at The New American.

Also exposing the Canadian Residential School hoax is a new book, Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan. — William F. Jasper

Trump Trade Chief Floats USMCA Withdrawal

As the Trump administration begins the scheduled process of reviewing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has raised the possibility of withdrawing from the trade agreement.

In an interview with Politico last week, Greer stated that exiting the agreement is “always a scenario,” clarifying that “The president’s view is he only wants deals that are a good deal. The reason why we built a review period into USMCA was in case we needed to revise it, review it or exit it.”

If the administration decides to exit the USMCA, it may instead negotiate bilateral agreements. The New York Times reports:

People familiar with the administration’s discussions say officials have considered turning the three-country agreement into two bilateral deals, reflecting their view that negotiations with Mexico have been easier than those with Canada. Mr. Greer confirmed the idea in his Politico interview, saying the United States’ relationship with Canada is “totally different” from the one it has with Mexico. A spokeswoman for [the U.S. trade representative] declined to comment further.

The Times also noted that despite these proposals, Trump is currently exempting USMCA-compliant goods from the tariffs he imposed on Canada and Mexico. These products comprise the vast majority of trade with the two countries.

The USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020, requires its member nations to review it every six years. President Donald Trump, who originally negotiated the agreement, has pledged to renegotiate it next year.

What are the implications for U.S. sovereignty? As we have repeatedly warned, the USMCA is a major step toward a full-blown EU-style North American Union. Although the mandatory six-year review presents an opportunity to restore U.S. sovereignty, it also poses a severe risk of further entangling the United States in globalist agreements. Exiting the USMCA would reverse much of the damage that the USMCA and NAFTA have inflicted on American independence. However, a revised multilateral deal — which remains extremely likely — could contain provisions further integrating the United States into a North American regional body, hastening the erosion of national sovereignty. Bilateral agreements, although generally less injurious of national sovereignty than multilateral ones, also risk containing such provisions.

Ultimately, the United States must completely exit the USMCA. Urge your U.S. representative and senators to enact legislation completely withdrawing the United States from this dangerous agreement. — Peter Rykowski

U.K.’s “Swift Courts” to Replace Jury Trials

The U.K. Labour government under Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice David Lammy announced on December 2 that — in a shocking dismantling of centuries-old liberties — jury trials for crimes carrying sentences under three years will be eliminated.

Instead, judge-only tribunals known as “Swift Courts” will free up “Crown Court time for the most serious offences.” Magistrates’ sentencing powers will expand to 18 months, with the ability to go up to two years if necessary.

Cases for serious offenses such as murder, rape, and grievous bodily harm will retain juries — for now — but the reforms empower courts to override criminal defendants’ right to a jury trial. Lammy said this will “prevent defendants from gaming the system.”

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said Lammy’s goal is to remove the British people from the justice system, stating in a video on X: “Despite what he claims, he isn’t doing this just to cut costs or clear the court backlogs, he is doing it because he doesn’t trust the British people. He would rather one judge administer justice, rather than twelve ordinary citizens.”

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch noted: “For over 800 years we have enjoyed the right to a jury trial in this country, but David Lammy has just announced he is slashing jury trials and ripping up that ancient liberty.”

By denying the right to a jury of one’s peers for criminal prosecutions, the government centralizes power in the hands of unelected judges, eroding the fundamental bedrock of common law enshrined in the Magna Carta. These “reforms” are a totalitarian attack disguised as “improved efficiency.”

The Free Speech Union noted that defendants invoking free-speech defenses are nearly twice as likely to be acquitted by juries than by magistrates, who are often aligned with Establishment politics. In speech-related offenses, magistrates acquitted 14 percent of defendants, Crown Courts 33 percent, and juries 75 percent of not-guilty pleas.

The group launched a petition calling for the government to reject these reforms and guarantee jury trials for all speech cases, warning that eliminating them would threaten free speech, silence dissent, and replace trials by a jury of one’s peers with state-imposed judgments.

Lammy’s move paves the way for a Soviet-style system plagued with inevitable abuse, where state-appointed judges decide guilt, abolishing due process. Without jury trials, justice becomes whatever the regime decrees. — David DeRidder

Is an “Agent X” Pandemic on the Horizon?

We’re told that a doctor in China first reported a novel coronavirus on December 27, 2019. Yet within a month, Stanford and Arizona State Universities collaborated on a “Biosecurity and Bioterrorism Response” conference highlighting the “Wuhan, China Coronavirus.”

ASU professor and CIA biodefense consultant George Poste delivered a presentation at this January 22 meeting, warning that “natural infectious diseases” are threats much more likely than bioterrorism to cause widespread harm.

The solution to protect mankind against “pandemics”? He pointed to “synthetic biology” and “digital biology” to “program and assemble new biological functions and organisms based on knowledge of the instructional ‘rules’ for synthesis and assembly” (Emphasis added.) He proudly named dozens of companies (including those in Big Pharma) working on these technologies.

According to Poste, they might reprogram “existing biological systems” or expand “biospace” through the “design, simulation and construction of novel functions/organisms with no known natural evolutionary counterpart.” He called this creation of chimeras by the names of “directed evolution” or “accelerated evolution.”

We mere mortals would call it gene editing or genetic engineering, but whatever the name, the point is timing. Poste was talking about this weeks before anyone heard of “Covid 19” — a name introduced on February 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization. President Donald Trump had not even shut down travel to and from China when Poste delivered his presentation.

Poste explained that this gene editing could be used to switch DNA code in cells on or off, to create new inheritable DNA code, or to render DNA code incapable of transmission to progeny. And it could be applied to “any organism, including humans,” as well as to “any cell type” affecting “any biological function.”

Poste admitted that such technological innovations could be used for good or evil, but what’s to worry, considering the widespread surveillance — through the use of on- or in-body sensors — that he advocated to monitor and evaluate people’s health status?

Poste’s work at ASU has been going on since at least 2003, when he founded its Biodesign Institute. But he was previously involved in biomedical research for “insidious weapons development,” which he discussed in a December 2000 interview with Laurie Garrett. There was no talk of benign chimeras in that conversation. Poste told Garrett at the time that “gene therapy’s goal is creation of stealth viral vectors that can introduce a gene, bypassing immune system recognition. What a perfect biological weapon!”

Poste also helped conduct a pandemic war game simulation at ASU on December 9 and 10, 2019 — again, interesting timing. “Pacific Eclipse” included representatives of academia, industry, military and government from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Both the exercise and Poste’s ASU presentation read like prophesy of what would soon afflict the world. How did he know?

A Big Pharma veteran, Poste holds numerous honorary doctorates besides his doctor of veterinary medicine and a Ph.D. in virology. His C.V. reads like a list of prestigious medical societies and awards, and he serves as an advisor to U.S. government agencies for defense, intelligence, healthcare, and national security. Notably, he is a CIA advisor on biodefense and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Subsequent presentations of his, available on the ASU website, discuss planning for the next global pandemic. Should we be concerned? — Rebecca Terrell

Congress Unveils Fiscal 2026 NDAA; Conservatives Disappointed

Congress has unveiled the text of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill setting the budget and policies of the U.S. Department of Defense. The House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday by a 312-112 vote, and the Senate is expected to vote on it next week.

S. 1071, originally introduced as a veterans-affairs-related bill, authorizes $900.6 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2026, $8 billion more than President Donald Trump requested. At 3,086 pages, it contains a wide array of policy provisions, ranging from troop pay to supply chains and acquisition procedures.

Conservatives and constitutionalists largely expressed disappointment at the bill’s provisions. For example, despite promises by House leadership (in exchange for passing the GENIUS Act), the bill omitted the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would have banned a central bank digital currency. Additionally, it restricts Trump’s ability to withdraw troops from Europe and South Korea. U.S. Representative Greg Steube (R-Fla.) highlighted other problems with the bill:

Under Republican rule, in the US Defense bill, we are sending billions overseas: $800 million to Ukraine’s endless war, $130 million to Syria, $1 billion to Taiwan, $15 million to Lebanon. That money should be going to our troops and the American people.

The bill even keeps DEI policies in our Intel community after we voted to remove them in committee!

Republicans were elected to put America First. It is time we act like it.

Ultimately, 18 Republicans voted against the NDAA. With 115 Democrats voting for the bill, it still passed by a wide margin.

As is common with omnibus-style bills, the NDAA also included several positive provisions, albeit relatively minor ones. For example, it repeals the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, strengthens restrictions on U.S. investment in China, and excludes a provision expanding coverage of in-vitro fertilization for service members that Democrats sought to add. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) also claimed that the bill “codif[ies] 15 of President Trump’s executive orders,” strengthens border security, and “prohibits contracts with advertising firms … that blacklist conservative news sources.”

Rather than passing weak legislation with unconstitutional, pro-interventionist provisions, Congress must follow the Constitution and implement a boldly Americanist agenda. Use the Freedom Index and Scorecards to educate your fellow citizens about your congressmen’s voting records and hold them accountable to their oath of office. — Peter Rykowski

The Sacred Rights of Life, Liberty, and a “Clean and Healthful Environment”?

Radical environmentalists in Montana are asking the state Supreme Court to block measures passed this year by the state legislature that would limit the ability of bureaucratic agencies to use so-called climate change as an excuse for expanding their overreach.

According to The Guardian, one of these bills is a law prohibiting the state from adopting air-quality standards that exceed those in the federal Clean Air Act. The other measure amends the state’s Environmental Policy Act in three ways. First, it limits environmental reviews of energy projects to include only six greenhouse gases. Second, it dictates that those reviews may not consider impacts of “upstream” or “downstream” emissions, such as those from transportation or out-of-state consumption. Finally, it prohibits agencies from using information about pollution to condition or deny permits for energy projects.

A group of young activists is pushing back. They won a 2023 landmark lawsuit against the state for “violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels.” Last year, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the judge’s decision in Held v. Montana.

“These new policies mean the state is going to just continue to act in a way that will increase greenhouse gasses, which during the Held case were shown to be disproportionately harming youth,” the lead petitioner told The Guardian. Now 24 years old, Rikki Held believes that the new Montana laws mean “we’ll continue down a path we already know and have proven is detrimental.”

Her attorney from the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, Nate Bellinger, called the provisions “unconstitutional” and a “complete inversion” of the Held ruling.

Held’s latest petition asks the court to strike down the new laws, citing the state constitution, which guarantees the “right” to a “clean and healthful environment.”

That phrase appears twice in Montana’s constitution, in fact, having been added in 1972 thanks to obvious environmentalist influence. It’s incorporated in the document’s list of “Inalienable Rights” in Article II, and it is part of Article IX’s “Protection and Improvement of the Environment.” The language was, of course, central to Held v. Montana, which is now poised to harm all residents of the state while offering no benefits whatsoever.

These constitutional additions make Montana a darling of the environmental set, who illogically conclude that rights are something to be provided rather than protected by government. — Rebecca Terrell

House Passes Resolution Denouncing “Horrors of Socialism”

The U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Con. Res. 58 on November 21, denouncing the “horrors of socialism” in a 285-98 vote. Sponsored by Representative María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), whose parents fled Cuba’s communist regime, the resolution garnered support from all Republicans and 86 Democrats. Salazar stated in her floor remarks:

This is a moral vote against an ideology that has destroyed millions and millions of families…. Unfortunately, socialism and Marxism crushes [sic] the human soul. And it’s not just my community in Miami. It’s the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world.

The resolution condemns regimes in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. It cites atrocities such as the Holodomor famine, Soviet gulags, ongoing mass starvation in North Korea, brutal repression in Cuba, Venezuela’s collapse into tyranny and poverty, and the tens of millions starved during China’s Great Leap Forward.

Representative Young Kim (R-Calif.) shared her experience as a Korean-American, warning of socialists taking political offices:

As a Korean-American who grew up in the aftermath of the Korean war, I have witnessed the horrors of socialism firsthand…. Now more than ever, as socialist ideas gain traction here at home, and as our nation’s largest city and financial capital has elected, not just a socialist but a communist, as mayor, we must firmly demand our capitalist free market system which empowers Americans of all backgrounds to achieve freedom, opportunity, and prosperity.

While this condemnation affirms that socialist policies are incompatible with our constitutional Republic, it’s symbolic and non-binding. Without action to dismantle the socialist policies embedded in the U.S. government, it is little more than empty rhetoric.

Congress must confront the socialism that has already taken root in the United States. Socialist entitlement programs that redistribute wealth — such as Social Security, SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, and housing programs — centralize government control and create total dependency on the state, undermining freedom. These are the very socialist policies the resolution condemns abroad, yet they are normalized and accepted by the uniparty.

This resolution is a small victory for Americans who reject the false promises of socialism. Restoring our constitutional Republic to its former glory demands more. Americans must urge Congress to uproot domestic socialism. States must wield their Article VI authority to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. Without such actions, this resolution, while positive, remains an empty gesture while Congress allows globalist influence to continue chipping away at our Republic. — David DeRidder

Somali Flag Raised Over Vermont

A school district in Vermont faces backlash after raising a Somali flag on its property last Friday.

“We are raising the Somali flag this week in honor of our Somali youth and families in Winooski and Vermont,” the Winooski School District posted on Facebook. “On Monday, we will be gathering to celebrate together and to learn more about our civil rights.”

Apparently, some Winooski residents weren’t thrilled at a foreign nation’s flag flying over their taxpayer-funded school district, where some nine percent of students are Somalis.

“Vermont Schools Sent Violent Messages After Raising Somali Flag,” was Newsweek’s spin on the story. It claimed the district had to take down its website and disconnect office phones due to the “racist and violent messages” it received.

In answer to protests, the district posted a follow-up on social media: “First, we want to assure our community that the United States flag remains in its proper place at the highest point, in full accordance with the U.S. flag code.” Three flag poles stand outside its headquarters. The tallest flies the U.S. flag, and the Vermont flag is unfurled on one of the other two. The Somali flag takes third billing for a week.

Vermont State Police spokesman Adam Silverman told the outlet that there appeared to be a “coordinated national campaign” against the district, but after reviewing more than 200 messages, investigators “had not identified any credible threats of violence.”

According to reports, the flag-raising was the district’s answer to comments President Donald Trump recently made about illegal Somali immigrants in Democratic U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar’s district in Minnesota. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country; I’ll be honest with you,” he said in a Cabinet meeting. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

Clutching his pearls, district Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria called the president’s comments “almost marching orders for a large part of the U.S. population to go and harass our community.”

Of so-called negative messages, Newsweek offered only one. Benny Johnson posted on X: “I’ve got a suggestion for ICE’s next stop.” Not quite violently bloodthirsty, was he?

The report failed to include rational sentiments such as this one from X: “I am not paying property taxes to honor a nation that gets the mainstay of its funding from piracy on the high seas.”

Others suggested revoking federal funding, firing school officials, and giving illegals a “one-way ticket back to Somalia.” One pointed out the hypocrisy of fleeing from the despotic regime of another country, only to play the victim of the country providing asylum.

The school district’s decision is oddly timed considering the ongoing U.S. House investigation and Treasury Department review of $1 billion in public-benefits fraud schemes involving Somalis in Minnesota. They involve the “alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID relief funds and fraud related to public housing programs and autism relief services,” according to Fox News. “Claims that at least some of the money was funneled to the African Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab are also being probed.”

Staff in the Minnesota Department of Human Services claim that Democratic Governor Tim Walz turned a blind eye to the situation, thereby perpetuating it. In November, Trump ended the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program for Somalis in Minnesota, calling the state “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” — Rebecca Terrell

ObamaCare: Taxpayers Funding Criminals

The so-called Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, has turned into a taxpayer-funded slush fund for criminals, with billions of dollars in waste and theft being uncovered. According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office exposing massive fraud, ineligible enrollees claimed ObamaCare premium tax credits, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars annually in overpayments and fraudulent claims.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) stated in a press release: “For years, we were told we could keep our plan, keep our doctor, and premiums would go down. None of it happened. This new report confirms what we already knew: under Obamacare, hardworking Americans saw their premiums skyrocket and their healthcare choices shrink, all while fraud benefitted insurance companies. Obamacare was built on lies and broken promises that hurt families and drove up costs.”

The epicenter of this catastrophe is Minnesota, where Somali migrant networks have exploited Medicaid expansions under ObamaCare to steal more than $600 million from social services. Under Governor Tim Walz, these schemes increased rapidly, with indictments revealing bribery attempts and remittances laundering millions overseas. Oversight failures at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services allowed ghost enrollees, identity theft, and fraudulent applications to proliferate during the Biden administration.

ObamaCare’s unconstitutional bureaucracy invites abuse, erodes trust, and is bankrupting the nation with trillions in wasted spending. This isn’t incompetence; it’s the inevitable corruption and rot of government-run healthcare and other socialist entitlement programs. Americans must demand that Congress repeal the Affordable Care Act, slash government-run subsidies, and restore free-market solutions. — David DeRidder