December 5, 2025 Insider Report

The Mamdani-DSA Comrades: São Paulo Forum Terrorists, Progressive International Communists

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was all smiles and disaffecting charm at his November 21 Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump. The two political foes who had earlier exchanged epithets (Mamdani called Trump a fascist and a despot; Trump called Mamdani a communist) couldn’t have been chummier or more cordial. Instead of insults, the two adversaries exchanged pats on the arm, handshakes, smiles, and compliments. CNN’s insufferable Jake Tapper found the lovefest “flabbergasting” — as did many other observers on both sides of the political aisle. Trump said he was surprised that he and Mamdani agree on more than he had expected and that they both share a desire to reduce crime and the housing shortage in the Big Apple.

“I met with a man who really wants to see New York be great again,” the president said. “I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor. The better he does, the happier I am. And we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true — having a strong and very safe New York.”

That, of course, would be wonderful. That is, if Mamdani, after his inauguration in January, turns out to be a “very rational person” (as Trump described him), and if he turns out to be as affably “moderate” as he appeared at his White House presser. Well, good luck with that! We’ll see; but don’t bet on it. Mamdani is merely the front man for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and they are far from “moderate.” Like Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama, Mamdani is the velvet glove on the steel fist, the alluring face of the current socialist-communist charm offensive. Recall that Mamdani campaigned on far-left issues such as defunding the police, ending cash bail, decarceration (emptying the jails, turning loose thousands of criminals), legalizing marijuana, decriminalizing simple drug possession, legalizing prostitution (which he calls “decriminalizing sex work”), maintaining NYC’s sanctuary status for illegal migrants, declaring NYC a transgender sanctuary, opposing (and possibly arresting) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, raising taxes on “whiter neighborhoods,” and much more. (See here, here, here, here, and here.) Then there are all his socialist freebies: free bus rides, free child care, a $30 minimum wage, Medicare for all, a rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, etc. And to cap it all off, there’s the classic communist call for “seizing the means of production.”

Just red-meat campaign rhetoric to bring out the far-left base? If you fall for that, you probably also believe Mao Zedong was merely an “agrarian reformer,” and Fidel Castro was a “nationalist,” not a communist.

Even if Mamdani desired to moderate his established course (which isn’t likely), he is caught in a current that he willingly jumped into. He is not his own man; he is a creation of Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America. They’re loving on him now, but woe betide him if he strays off the commie reservation. Bernie and the craftier DSA leaders, no doubt, will counsel him against following the extreme Bolshevik berserkers who demand immediate fulfilment of his campaign pledges. But they will also demand that he push the leftward agenda harder and faster than the “moderate” Democrats led by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). As left-wing philosophy Professor Ben Burgis of Rutgers University notes in an article at the radical-left website Jacobin (“Zohran Is Taking Bernie’s Movement Into the Future”), the current Mamdani phenomenon is the result of years of persistent plodding, plotting, and plowing by the DSA at the national, state, and local levels.

“Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory marks a new chapter for democratic socialism in America,” writes Burgis. “Like Bernie Sanders before him, he’s shown that relentless focus on a unifying message of economic justice can win against establishment sabotage.” He continues:

This momentous victory wouldn’t have happened if Bernie Sanders hadn’t laid the groundwork during his two historic runs for president, giving birth to the revitalized, millennial-led democratic socialist movement out of which Zohran comes. Bernie, too, began his political career as a local mayor, and he seems to see much of himself in Mamdani….

Zohran is Bernie’s heir in particular ways. First, he is, to a unique extent, a product of the post-Bernie “millennial left.” He was deeply involved in its main organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for years before he ran for office….

One of Bernie’s greatest strengths as a left-wing communicator has always been that, while he unapologetically holds straight-down-the-line progressive positions on social policy issues, he’s relentlessly focused on broadly appealing calls for universalist economic redistribution.

Yes, Mamdani is a Bernie Bro and a DSA apparatchik, but with more charisma, charm, and communication ability than the geriatric socialist from Vermont. As the DSA’s own website notes, the organization is “Making Mamdani a Model.” He is their male version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) with an added Muslim twist to take advantage of the current Gaza-inspired activism. It’s working. As The New American reported, DSA radicals now hold 250 elective offices in cities across the country: Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, New York City, Poughkeepsie, and Washington, D.C.

No question, the DSA is on the move. And they plan to take America to a very dark and scary place, all the while clothed in a camouflage of compassion, tolerance, diversity, equity, and inclusion. How has this come about? Author-researcher Trevor Loudon explained all of this in an article for The New American (“Democratic Socialists of America: Communism for the New Millennium”) in 2019. More than any other person, Loudon has, through his books, documentaries, speaking tours, podcasts, and Keywiki website, been exposing and warning about DSA for years. (See our video interview with him on Mamdani and DSA shortly before the New York City election here.)

The central figure in the DSA’s advance, as noted above, is Bernie Sanders, the “Independent” U.S. Senator from Vermont. His lifetime score of 26 percent on the Freedom Index (covering 25 years in the House and Senate), while the equivalent of an F- report card, doesn’t begin to reveal the extent of his subversive, revolutionary record, stretching back decades to his notorious stint as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s, when he shamelessly used his office to shill for the communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua. (See “Exposed”: Fake News Ignores Video of “Drunk, Naked” Bernie Sanders Singing With Soviet Comrades.)

For decades, the DSA was a member of the Socialist International (SI), the global organization for socialist, communist, and “former” communist parties and NGOs. (For more on the Socialist International see here, here, here, and here.) However, in 2017, DSA and other leftist organizations, deciding SI wasn’t “progressive” enough for them, left the Socialist International. Where did they go? Further leftward, of course. In August 2023, DSA joined the recently formed Progressive International (PI). In the brief space we have here we will offer a few clues to its ideological stripe. Consider the PI’s Council, for instance, which includes open members of communist parties, such as:

Karol Cariola, member of Chile’s Chamber of Deputies, former general secretary of the Communist Youth;
Annie Raja, member of the National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India (CPI), wife of the general secretary of the CPI;
Vashna Jagarnath, deputy general secretary of the Socialist Revolutionary Worker’s Party of South Africa;
Mariela Castro, deputy of the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba, niece of Fidel Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro;
Guilherme Castro Boulos, member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, former member of the Union of Communist Youth, current leader of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which regularly allies itself with several of Brazil’s communist parties.

And that’s only a thumbnail. Now, consider all the frothing at the mouth by the American media every time a conservative Republican goes to Europe and meets with political leaders whom the media have falsely labeled and vilified as fascist. But nary a peep about the Mamdani-DSA-Sanders affiliation with the Progressive International.

The Progressive International was launched in 2020 by the Sanders Institute and the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). As one might guess, the eponymous institute was founded by Bernie. DiEM25 is the creation of Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek Marxist (he joined the Communist Society at the University of Essex) and Croatian Marxist Srećko Horvat, whose 2017 book Subversion! was praised by Noam Chomsky and the rest of the usual Marxoid chorus. (For more on the Progressive International, see Loudon’s Keywiki entry.)

Even more troubling than its affiliation with the PI is the DSA’s association with the São Paulo Forum (FSP, Foro de São Paulo), an operation launched by the Cuban DGI, Fidel Castro’s communist intelligence agency, to bring Marxist-Leninist political parties throughout Latin America together with narco-terrorist groups in the region. More than 20 years ago we wrote:

The São Paulo Forum (SPF) was created in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1990, under the official sponsorship of Fidel Castro and Brazil’s Communist Workers Party, headed by Lula da Silva, now president of Brazil. Member organizations of the SPF include the Communist Parties of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela. “Former” terrorist groups that have gone political, such as Nicaragua’s Sandinistas and El Salvador’s FMLN, are also SPF members. So are organizations that are currently on the U.S. State Department’s list of active terrorist groups, such as Colombia’s FARC and ELN, the Tupac Amaru of Peru, Chile’s MIR, and the Basque ETA of Spain.

The New American has been chronicling and exposing the FSP’s activities for years, while the “mainstream” media have intentionally turned a blind eye to their growing threat. Unfortunately, even most of the conservative media have pretty much neglected to notice the FSP’s outsized footprint in Latin America. (See some of our FSP coverage here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Notwithstanding the São Paulo Forum’s open association with murderous communist tyrants and terrorists, the DSA voted to join the FSP in 2023, shortly after joining the Progressive International, all of which provides ample warning to anyone not willfully blind that there may be some not-so-hidden traps when Mamdani, Bernie, AOC, and other members of the DSA use words like “democratic” and “progressive” to promote their communist-socialist agenda. — William F. Jasper

Mamdani’s Socialism: You May Be “Executed in a Kindly Manner,” Fabian Style?

Zohran Mamdani has eclipsed Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) as the face of the Democratic Socialists of America, and established the DSA as a national force to be reckoned with. The DSA’s militant socialism with a kinder, gentler face is proving attractive to low-information voters and the various grievance lobbies, and will have a considerable impact on the 2026 midterm elections.

Still, the average American voter knows next to nothing about the DSA’s origins and influences. Here is an abbreviated DSA pedigree that you won’t find at ancestry.com or in the pages of The New York Times:

The Fabian Society was founded in England in 1884.
The Fabian Society begat the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) in the United States in 1905.
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society begat the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) in 1921.
The League for Industrial Democracy begat the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) in 1935.
The Student League for Industrial Democracy begat the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1960.
The Students for a Democratic Society begat the Weather Underground (WU) terrorists in 1969.
The Students for a Democratic Society, together with the Socialist Party USA, begat the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) in 1973.
The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, together with the Communist Party USA, begat the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in 1982.

It is worth noting that the DSA is following the blueprint laid down by the Fabian Socialists, who have been the brains and the manipulative power behind Britain’s Labour Party for more than a century. Fully aware that Britain was not ready for Bolshevik-style revolutionary socialism, they opted for the patient gradualism of evolutionary socialism, employing a strategy of “penetration and permeation” of British society and institutions.

The Fabians, privileged intellectual elites, are infamous for exploiting fake concern for the poor and the “downtrodden masses” to accumulate power in government. One of the most famous Fabian founders was playwright/author George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion became the stupendously successful stage play and movie My Fair Lady. It’s hard to believe that the creator of such delightful entertainment could be an incredibly calloused advocate of mass murder by the socialist state. Oh, but he assured us, it would be “kindly” mass murder — for the good of society. Here’s how he explained it in his 1928 book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism:

I contended that poverty should be neither pitied as an inevitable misfortune, nor tolerated as a just retribution for misconduct, but resolutely stamped out and prevented from recurring as a disease fatal to human society. I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.

How’s that for a nugget of compassion?! Shaw wrote that in 1928, after the mass-murdering rampages of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Soviet Russia were already well known. In 1931, three years after publishing that vile screed, Shaw visited Stalin’s Soviet Union, where he celebrated his 75th birthday and was grandly feted by the Soviet commissars. It turned into a major propaganda coup for the communist tyrant. Shaw described the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) as a “land of hope,” in contrast to the capitalist “Western countries of despair.”

There’s more. Economist Thomas Sowell wrote:

Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the “detestable” people who “have no right to live.” He added: “I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves.”

If anyone upstaged Shaw in fawning over Stalin’s communist paradise it was Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Fabian Society founders and among its most prolific authors and outspoken activists. They went on a two-month pilgrimage to the Soviet Union in 1932, and returned there in 1933 for another Potemkin Village tour. Their 1935 book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization went over the top glorifying Stalin and the Soviet gulag state, so much so that even many liberal reviewers and historians condemned it. However, there were plenty of those who sang their praises and echoed their pro-Soviet Fabian propaganda line.

The Fabian-ISS-LID-SLID-SDS-WU-DSOC-DSA lineage matters. Murderous “compassion” and “kindness” is in their bloodline, their DNA. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

For an in-depth study of the Fabians, see Fabian Freeway: High Road to Socialism in the U.S.A., the incredibly detailed 1966 expose by Rose L. Martin, now back in print. See also these articles: here, here, here, and here. — William F. Jasper

Russia Rushing Military Aid to Venezuela

In recent days, Russia has been upping the ante with the growing Venezuelan flashpoint, sending shipments of sophisticated weapons, military advisors, and mercenaries to help protect the Maduro regime against Trump. As Putin’s Russia continues to exchange the false mask of friendship for the long-warned reconstitution of the Soviet Bloc, Venezuela is morphing into the new Cuba. Last week, for example, at least one Ilyushin transport plane landed in Caracas, laden with various advanced weapons, including anti-aircraft batteries, and as many as 100 Wagner mercenaries. In addition, Putin has named a top commander in Ukraine, Colonel General Oleg Makarevich (the man who oversaw the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and the resultant catastrophic flooding of southern Ukraine), as head of Russia’s new military mission in Venezuela. These developments, along with the thousands of Cuban mercenaries fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine (as many as 20,000, according to some estimates, exceeding even the number of North Koreans), point up the growing linkage between the Ukraine War and the communist threat in the Western Hemisphere. It is well established that Russian special forces in Venezuela helped Maduro thwart a coup in 2019, and the Russian presence has only grown since then. Maduro has requested additional Russian arms to prepare to fight any attempt at his ouster, including shoulder-launched MANPADS, night vision goggles, and GPS jamming equipment that could seriously hinder U.S. operations and communication.

Most of this information is ignored by the legacy media, who seem determined to overlook the drive to transform Venezuela into a major Russo-Chinese base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of Cuba on steroids. As one commentator put it, “Venezuela is no longer a local showdown — it’s becoming a proxy deterrence theater between 2 nuclear powers who don’t want a fight… but are rapidly building the conditions for one.” — Steve Bonta

EU Court Demands Member States Recognize Same-sex “Marriage”

The European Union’s highest court has ruled that EU member states are legally obligated to recognize same-sex “marriages” performed in other member states, regardless of their own laws.

On November 25, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in favor of a homosexual Polish couple who “married” in Germany in 2018. The Polish government had refused to recognize their “marriage” after they moved back to Poland.

In a press release announcing the ruling, the ECJ declared:

The Court recalls that, while rules relating to marriage come within the competence of the Member States, the Member States are required to comply with EU law in exercising that competence. The spouses in question, as EU citizens, enjoy the freedom to move and reside within the territory of the Member States and the right to lead a normal family life when exercising that freedom and upon returning to their Member State of origin. In particular, when they create a family life in a host Member State, in particular by virtue of marriage, they must have the certainty to be able to pursue that family life upon returning to their Member State of origin….

For that reason, the Court holds that such a refusal is contrary to EU law. It infringes not only the freedom to move and reside, but also the fundamental right to respect for private and family life….

Accordingly, given that transcription is the only means provided for by Polish law for a marriage concluded in another Member State to be effectively recognised by the administrative authorities, Poland is required to apply that procedure without distinction to marriages between persons of the same sex and to those concluded between persons of the opposite sex. [Emphasis in original.]

Despite Poland’s stance in the ruling, factions of the country’s current, pro-EU government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former president of the European Council, celebrated the ruling. In fact, Tusk’s government has attempted to expand government support for same-sex unions, though President Karol Nawrocki is likely to veto any such legislation.

The ECJ’s ruling illustrates the EU’s continued chipping away of national sovereignty and gradual transformation into a true United States of Europe. Although the ECJ’s press release claimed the ruling “does not undermine the national identity or pose a threat to the public policy of the spouses’ Member State of origin,” it clearly infringes upon member states’ ability to set their own domestic policies. It is likely only a matter of time before the EU demands that all member states fully legalize same-sex “marriage.”

The ECJ’s ruling also serves as a warning for Americans. Instead of allowing trade agreements such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to morph into a full-fledged North American Union — exactly what happened with the EU — Congress must terminate all foreign entanglements. — Peter Rykowski

The Silver Freeze: Analysts Question CME’s Convenient Cooling Crisis

On Black Friday, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) experienced a massive cooling system failure that halted trading for more than 10 hours in the world’s largest derivatives exchange. Analysts are crying foul due to the odd timing of the incident.

“As silver surged toward new highs and physical inventories dried up, the unthinkable happened: the CME went dark for 10 hours,” reports Taylor Kenney of ITM Trading. “The excuse? A cooling issue. But what if this was more than just a tech hiccup?”

Breached.Company noted that silver futures were approaching “historic breakout levels above $54/oz and gold surged past $4,186.”

“A silver squeeze was unfolding in real-time,” Kenney explains. “Physical demand was surging. Inventories were critically tight. The paper markets were breaking under pressure.”

Like many others, he doubts CME’s excuse of a cooling issue at one of its data centers. Both cooling systems and data centers have redundancy systems and backups, which, according to reports, failed simultaneously — in the midst of extremely cold temperatures that visited Aurora, Illinois, (site of the affected CyrusOne data center) over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“Isn’t it convenient that a system designed to withstand disasters crumbled at the exact moment silver demand spiked and trust in paper claims wavered?” Kenney asks.

On top of the cooling-system failure, banks suddenly borrowed an abnormally large amount — $24.4 billion — from the Federal Reserve’s standing repo facility (SRF), which “provides emergency liquidity when short-term funding markets seize up.”

Experts say it was one of the largest single-day borrowings ever recorded, and particularly odd since Black Friday is a half-day trading session. Breached.Company says, “Typical daily usage is zero to single-digit billions.” Its commentary gives ample analysis and industry insider perspective on the situation, concluding that:

The November 28, 2025 CME “cooling failure” will be remembered as either:

Option A: An unfortunate technical failure that coincidentally occurred during a historic precious metals rally, at the exact moment silver was breaking out, on a day when banks borrowed $24.4 billion from the Fed, affecting options expiry worth $600 billion, despite redundant cooling systems and free-cooling weather conditions, at a facility with a history of infrastructure problems, requiring 10+ hours to resolve despite deployment of temporary cooling equipment, with gradual piecemeal restoration suggesting improvised rather than planned recovery.

Option B: A strategic intervention designed to prevent a catastrophic short squeeze in precious metals markets by providing time for market makers to reposition, institutional players to secure funding through Fed repos, and derivatives dealers to manage exposure during holiday-thinned liquidity.

Regardless of how the cooling system failure is remembered, this bank run on physical silver is an obvious sign of the ongoing collapse of our financial system. — Rebecca Terrell

New Development Bank: More Communist-Globalist-Terrorist NWO Ties

On December 2, Indonesia’s Economic Ministry announced that Indonesia will be assigning $1 billion to the New Development Bank, formerly known as the BRICS Development Bank. The New Development Bank (NDB) is headquartered in Shanghai and Communist China is its principal funder. The NDB’s president is Dilma Rousseff, the “former” communist terrorist, former leader of Brazil’s communist Workers’ Party, and former president of Brazil.

The bank was launched in 2014 at the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, and was signed by all five of the original BRICS member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). BRICS has now expanded to 10 members, with the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Besides BRICS members, the NDB membership also includes Algeria, Bangladesh, Colombia, Uruguay, and Uzbekistan.

Indonesia’s NDB infusion underscores the country’s growing alignment with Beijing, as President Prabowo Subianto continues sidling up to Xi Jinping and the CCP. This is no small matter, as Indonesia is the world’s fourth most-populous nation (280 million), the nation with the largest Muslim population (242 million), and Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

In November, NDB President Rousseff was the final speaker addressing the Heads of State Summit of the UN Climate Conference (COP30), held in Belém, Brazil, where she pushed the disastrous and unsustainable UN/NDB “green” program for “sustainable development.”

The NDB website proudly boasts photos of Rousseff welcoming Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro to her Shanghai headquarters this past May. Like Rousseff, Petro is a “former” terrorist, having been a leader of Colombia’s murderous M-19 terror gang in the 1980s. Just one “former” communist terrorist to another, right? Well, maybe not so “former” after all. Seems he is now leading a narco-terrorist regime, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. “Since President Gustavo Petro came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on October 24. “President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity. Today, President Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation and make clear that we will not tolerate the trafficking of drugs into our nation,” Bessent continued, referring to Executive Order 14059, which targets foreign persons involved in the global illicit drug trade. (More on Dilma Rousseff’s terrorist ties, including to the São Paulo Forum, here, here, here, here, and here.)

The NDB’s ties to China go beyond its placement in Shanghai and Beijing’s bankrolling of its operations. It is a “sister institution” of the CCP’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is also based in Shanghai. The NDB is a little sister to the AIIB in promoting China’s Belt and Road Initiative throughout the BRICS-aligned nations. The two Shanghai-based operations also get globalist (and U.S. taxpayer) assistance for their endeavors via partnerships with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, Eurasian Development Bank, and other multilateral institutions. (More on AIIB here, here, here, and here.)

It should be noted that the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Globalist-Communist Billionaires Club, has been a big booster of Dilma Rousseff, BRICS, AIIB, and NDB. (See here, here, here, and here.) And, of course, it was British WEF bigwig Lord Jim O’Neill (former chairman of Goldman Sachs, former chairman of Chatham House, aka the Royal Institute of International Affairs) who coined the term BRICS. He authored the 2001 Goldman Sachs paper promoting the idea of a BRICS-centered New World Order and championed the New Development Bank. — William F. Jasper

Heritage Foundation Exposes Trump’s Deportation Numbers

In a recent report, the Heritage Foundation called out the Trump administration for being “significantly off pace” on its mass-deportation goal. Amid plummeting approval numbers among Americans who voted for President Trump to secure the border, former Homeland Security official Mike Howell told Axios, “The American people voted for mass deportations. They’re getting mass communications instead.”

The Heritage report states that current policy prioritizes enforcing immigration law only for the “worst of the worst,” while ignoring the broader illegal population. This “criminals-only” approach cripples mass-deportation efforts, with the report highlighting necessary changes — ending priority language that limits ICE to apprehending serious offenders, increasing worksite raids in agriculture and hospitality, and redirecting ICE solely to immigration enforcement rather than general law enforcement.

As Trump stated in his March 2025 address to Congress, his goal is to surpass the Eisenhower administration’s deportation numbers. He claimed in rallies, “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” Actual enforced deportations stand at around 515,000, far from the aggressive enforcement needed to fulfill Trump’s pledge.

With an estimated 14 to 21 million illegal aliens currently in the United States, the administration’s projected 600,000 to 700,000 deportations by year’s end pale in comparison to Eisenhower’s 1954 operation, which saw more than 1.1 million departures. Trump’s plan — mobilizing ICE, the FBI, the National Guard, and local law enforcement — aimed to start with high-profile targets such as Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, Colorado, and Haitian communities in Springfield, Ohio — but legal injunctions have slowed progress. Unelected leftist bureaucrats and judges continue to undermine Article II authority, much as they defied Trump during his first administration.

Americans must reject open borders, protect U.S. sovereignty, and demand the Trump administration take immediate mass-deportation action before it’s too late. — David DeRidder

New Jersey Governor-elect Floats Withholding Federal Taxes

New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill has discussed potentially withholding federal taxes from the federal government in response to recent Trump administration actions.

Politico reports:

Sherrill, speaking with [comedian Jon] Stewart, said that she thinks about withholding federal tax dollars “all the time” and that it’s a “great idea.”

“If they’re not gonna run the programs, then what are we paying them for?” she said. “It’s like, you know, you’re paying us for a service and they’re not delivering. So let’s stop paying for it.”

Sherrill appears to be taking a page from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s playbook. In June, Newsom similarly floated having California stop paying federal taxes — although the idea never materialized. He later told Politico that the proposal would be difficult, especially since individuals and businesses pay taxes to the federal government, not states.

“We’re assessing it, we have looked into it, and [the Department of] Finance is looking across the spectrum of options. But it’s limited, because most of that distribution and transfer comes from individual taxpayers,” Newsom later said.

We reported on Newsom’s comments in the June 13, 2025 edition of Insider Report. In that edition, we noted the following, which is worth repeating here:

Of course, Newsom, [Assembly Speaker Robert] Rivas, and other California Democrats are motivated by their opposition to Donald Trump and his administration’s policies, rather than sincere adherence to fiscal responsibility or constitutional principles. However, their proposal resembles what supporters of constitutional enforcement, i.e., nullification, have advocated for years. States can enact a “State Sovereignty and Federal Tax Funds Act,” also known as an “escrow” law, which (put simply) would require federal taxes collected in a particular state to be sent to the state government, which would then control how much the federal government could obtain.

A major difference between such a law and the blue-state proposals is that the former’s withholding of federal tax revenues is based on the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution grants only limited, specifically enumerated powers to the federal government, and as the 10th Amendment affirms, all other powers are reserved to the states or the people. Thus, any federal spending outside its enumerated powers is unconstitutional and must be declared null and void — regardless of whether a federal court recognizes it as such.

Contact your state legislators, and urge them to nullify all unconstitutional federal acts — motivated not by partisan politics, but by a principled defense of the Constitution, regardless of the inevitable pushback from the federal government, judiciary, and others. — Peter Rykowski

Religious and Medical Freedoms Score Win in W.Va.

Schools in West Virginia may no longer prevent unvaccinated children from attending, since a court ruled to allow religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccines.

On November 26, circuit judge Michael Froble issued a permanent injunction against the state’s vaccine requirements. He included both the state and Raleigh County education boards in the decree.

In his 74-page ruling, Froble declared that vaccine requirements violate West Virginia’s Equal Protection for Religion Act of 2023. He pointed out that the boards have not provided proof that unvaccinated children “pose a risk to anyone else,” and noted the hypocrisy that adults in school settings are not required to be vaccinated. Froble claimed solidarity with 45 other states that allow religious exemptions. (Until now, West Virginia had only allowed those for medical reasons.)

In answer to the ruling, the West Virginia Department of Education issued a statement suspending compulsory vaccine requirements “pending further proceedings on the issue before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.”

The department more clearly revealed its stance back in July, when the judge issued a preliminary injunction to three Raleigh County students involved in the lawsuit — an order that allowed only those three to attend school without required vaccinations. At that time, the state Board of Education expressed its disappointment and encouraged families to “comply with West Virginia’s compulsory vaccination laws as required by legislative statute.”

Now that the injunction displaces the statute, Republican Governor Patrick Morrisey is celebrating. “Huge win for religious liberty in West Virginia,” he posted on social media. “Today’s ruling is a win for every family forced from school over their faith.”

Morrisey may well feel justified, as he issued an executive order in January requiring the state to allow religious exemptions. The West Virginia Board of Education instructed county boards to ignore that order, and the state Legislature rejected a vaccine exemption bill in March.

These measures ignore legitimate concerns of parents who know something of the deplorable vaccine injury track record of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current immunization schedule, which includes up to 29 doses of various vaccines by the time a baby is 18 months old, and dozens more by the time he reaches 18 years.

Because many live virus vaccines are developed using cell cultures from aborted babies, families also object for religious reasons. — Rebecca Terrell

Wyoming Legislators Consider Eliminating Property Taxes

The Joint Revenue Committee of the Wyoming Legislature has voted in favor of five measures to help reduce property taxes, including a state constitutional amendment that, if passed, would completely eliminate property taxes.

The Legislature will consider these measures during the legislative session next year.

These proposals reflect growing support nationwide for reducing or ending property taxes. In fact, rhetoric from conservative politicians is increasingly mirroring what the late John Birch Society CEO Art Thompson noted in his book Property Rights: As Sacred as the Laws of God: “Try not paying your taxes and you will soon find out whether you own your property, or whether the government really owns it in the fullest sense of the word.”

Although supporters of property taxation argue they are necessary to fund government services, the reality is that state (and local) governments have massively expanded their scopes far beyond the proper role of government, i.e., protection of God-given rights. In other words, areas such as education, healthcare, and social welfare are not the proper role of government, and should be managed privately — government involvement in these areas has massively increased spending, taxes, and the overall cost of living.

Urge your state legislators to firmly protect the God-given right to property, including by eliminating property taxes. — Peter Rykowski

The 2025 Hurricane Season: No Tempest, Not Even in a Teacup

Since the 2025 hurricane season closed on November 30, climate alarmists are scrambling to make the most out of a situation that doesn’t fit well in their ongoing sky-is-falling narrative.

“For the first time in a decade, not a single hurricane struck the U.S. this season,” Dr. Neil Jacobs, administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) admitted in a press release.

The agency records “13 named storms (winds of 39 mph or greater), of which five became hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater).” These come in under the average of 14 named storms and seven hurricanes. Additionally, the peak of this year’s season was “quiet with no tropical activity.”

Among the hurricanes, three reached Category 5 level, the highest rating with sustained winds of 157 miles per hour or greater. The record is four Category 5 storms in a single season.

Moreover, the trend in Category 5 hurricanes has seen a modest uptick since 1924 as Earth emerged from the Little Ice Age. According to NOAA’s data, most of these severe storms never make landfall in the mainland United States. Those that have include Camille on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969 and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys. (Note that these storms pre-date our modern era of a supposed collective, run-away fossil fuel fetish.)

Nevertheless, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) is loath to let high winds go to waste.

“This season really stood out for how strong some storms got,” says NHC meteorologist Robbie Berg, in a social media short.

No, it really doesn’t, according to a graphic journal produced by climate expert Roger Pielke, Jr. one day before launch of the 2025 hurricane season.

Using official data from NHC, Colorado State University, and other peer-reviewed research, he compiled graphs of national, North Atlantic, and global hurricane history between 1900 and 2024. They reveal flat or near-flat trends in metrics such as landfalling and major hurricanes, frequency and cyclonic energy per storm, and normalized U.S. hurricane damage.

“For those wanting to show an increasing trend,” Pielke notes, “use 1970 to 2024.” (He added a picture of cherries to that upward-trending graph, accusing climate fear-mongers of cherry-picking their data.)

To add historic perspective, he included a tongue-in-cheek table of “Continental US Hurricanes by President,” observing:

Donald Trump needs just 6 landfalling hurricanes over the next four hurricane seasons to reach 2nd place for total landfalls, passing GHWB. If Trump can match his first term, with 13, he will pass FDR into 1st place. He needs 22 to take the lead from Taft for 1st place in landfalls per year. Batten down!

For the record, William Howard Taft served as U.S. President from 1909 until 1913, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt occupied the White House from 1933 to 1944. No wonder alarmists reference back only to 1970. — Rebecca Terrell

Cook County, Illinois, Creates Permanent “Guaranteed Income” Program

Cook County, Illinois, the second-largest county in the United States by population, has created a permanent “guaranteed income” program. Fox News reports:

The Cook County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved $7.5 million for a permanent guaranteed basic income program last week. Chicago, the largest city in the Midwest and third-largest in the country, is the county seat for Cook County.

Cook County made headlines as it established the guaranteed basic income program after many local governments across the country launched pilot versions.

Guaranteed basic income programs have become a trend across the U.S. in recent years with more than 100 pilots launched since 2018. Mayors for Guaranteed Income grew into a coalition of 150 mayors pushing pilot programs, offering low-income participants up to $1,000 a month with no strings attached. The group has pushed pilot programs that have been adopted by municipalities across the country.

The Cook County program was launched in 2022 with the aid of federal COVID-19 relief funds.

As noted above, multiple localities — and even the state of California — have implemented guaranteed-income pilot programs. Cook County’s program, however, is now permanent.

Although supporters of guaranteed-income programs frame them as assisting low-income citizens, in reality, they are socialist wealth-redistribution programs. Discussing a proposed Wisconsin bill to ban guaranteed-income programs, The New American’s 2023 Wisconsin Legislative Scorecard notes:

The concept of a “guaranteed income” (i.e., ‘universal basic income’) relies on the immoral and anti-constitutional act of government-imposed theft disguised as taxation, which takes from citizens the wages they have rightfully earned. This manifestly socialist wealth-redistribution scheme violates both the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, which were intended to protect against undue deprivation or disparagement of a person’s “property” and provide “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans.

Rather than enacting such programs, elected officials should reduce the size and scope of government back within the boundaries recognized by the Founding Fathers. This would significantly reduce the cost of living, encourage economic growth, and restore individual freedom.

Multiple states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota, have banned local guaranteed-income programs. Urge your state legislators to enact such a ban, if they have not already done so, and protect the God-given right to property. — Peter Rykowski

Family Issues Plea for Public Support in Wrongful Death Case

A hearing is set in the latest chapter of an ongoing medical freedom fight in Wisconsin.

On December 11 at 3:00 p.m. (** update: changed to December 19 at 11:00 a.m.) in the Outagamie County Courthouse, Scott Schara will face the same judge, Mark McGinnis, who presided over the civil trial Schara lost in June against St. Elizabeth Hospital in Appleton and against the doctor and nurse in charge of the care of his daughter, Grace. She died in that Covid hospital in 2021. Grace had Down syndrome, and her parents believe she was targeted for destruction on that account.

Schara says McGinnis evinced prejudice against him in the earlier case and thinks it contributed to his loss.

“I believe that newly discovered evidence showed Judge McGinnis’s personal bias,” Schara wrote on his blog. His motion says that McGinnis allowed defense attorneys to attack Schara’s credibility on the basis of his religious beliefs, and it lists other points of what he sees as disregard of his concerns.

Schara is now petitioning the circuit court of Outagamie County for a new trial. (Read his motion and affidavit, and the background of the story here and here. The defendants from the original trial have also filed a joint brief in opposition, which you can access here: Defendants’ Joint Brief in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Reconsideration and a New Trial.)

“Please mark your calendars,” Schara appeals to his followers. “If you can attend [the December 19 hearing] and/or pray for God’s will to be done, our family would appreciate it.” — Rebecca Terrell