The Social World

Category: Law

  • Why California shouldn’t foot the bill for Kamala Harris’s protection

    Why California shouldn’t foot the bill for Kamala Harris’s protection

    The first time I worked alongside the California Highway Patrol’s Dignitary Protection Section was in Beverly Hills in the late 1990s. Think swimming pools and movie stars. The setting could have been a Hollywood caricature of itself: manicured hedges, a mansion where priceless Old World paintings hung in the hallways, and a guest list that ran from President Clinton to Barbara Streisand. The rest is appropriately redacted. I was a new Secret Service agent then still learning the art of protection, but amid the clinking glasses and camera flashes, what struck me most wasn’t the celebrities. It was the calm professionalism of the CHP officers beside me. That was my introduction to an agency that proved, time and again, to be one of the finest partners I encountered in 23 years of protecting American presidents.

    That same agency is now in the headlines again because the CHP, along with the Los Angeles Police Department, has been tasked with protecting former Vice President Kamala Harris. This follows the Department of Homeland Security and President Trump’s decision to end her Secret Service protection in August, a decision some critics cast as political. But set the rhetoric aside: the decision was lawful, prudent and entirely in line with precedent and threat intelligence.

    Since 2008, former vice presidents have received six months of Secret Service taxpayer-funded protection after leaving office. That’s it. President Biden extended Harris’s coverage to a full year, which was an exception to the long-standing six-month norm. Mike Pence, who left office under bipartisan criticism and faced objectively higher threats, was denied an extension beyond six months. Harris, like every vice president before her, has had plenty of time to adjust to private life and arrange her own security.

    It’s worth remembering that until 1951, vice presidents received no Secret Service protection whatsoever and it was voluntary even then. It took the upheavals of the 1960s for permanent protection to become mandatory. The rules today are not a slight; they are the product of decades of balancing public duty with private status. The very fact that vice-presidential protection was not required until the 1960s highlights how exceptional continuous coverage really is.

    The Secret Service has more than enough on its plate. Each September, the UN General Assembly brings 150 world leaders to New York, a logistical and workforce colossus. Add to that an ever-expanding roster of protectees and an international and American threat environment unlike any in modern memory, and the case for focusing resources is obvious. After two assassination attempts against him last year, President Trump is acutely aware of the consequences of political rhetoric. But decisions on protection must be judged by precedent and threat, not politics.

    Which brings us back to the CHP and the LAPD. They are world-class agencies, fully capable of protecting Harris, just as they protect California’s governor, first family and visiting dignitaries. Their Dignitary Protection Section doesn’t just stand posts; it runs threat assessments, coordinates intelligence, and executes the same protective tradecraft the Secret Service practices daily. Having worked shoulder to shoulder with them in my earliest assignments and many times since, I can say with confidence: Harris is in good hands.

    But capability isn’t the point here. Appropriateness is. When police unions themselves question whether their officers should be pulled off homicide cases or narcotics investigations to provide security for a private book tour, the problem is clear. Every officer detailed to protect Harris is one less officer tackling Los Angeles’s fentanyl crisis, or responding to wildfires, or working the endless grind of homelessness on the city’s streets. Security for a multi-city tour can run into the millions of dollars that publishers, who stand to profit, are far better placed to absorb than taxpayers.

    There is no dishonor in Harris providing her own security. Many public figures do quietly, professionally and without subsidy. Indeed, some of the same private security firms employ former Secret Service agents and CHP veterans. To suggest otherwise is to confuse celebrity with sovereignty.

    The California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department deserve praise for stepping up when called upon as they always do. Their officers are some of the best in the world, and their history of partnership with the Secret Service is a model of interagency cooperation. But their resources are not infinite, and their first responsibility is to the citizens of California. Every hour an officer spends guarding a private citizen is an hour not spent on the crises California faces daily.

    George Orwell once noted that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Strip away the noise, and the facts here are plain: precedent was followed, taxpayers should not carry a private burden, and California’s finest officers deserve to spend their time where they are most needed.


  • Why Trump should impose a trans gun ban

    Why Trump should impose a trans gun ban

    As President Trump’s Department of Justice deliberates over a gun ban on transgender people, we must stop and reflect on the environment we have created for our children and ask whether we are truly protecting them.

    Whenever tragedy strikes, progressives rush to the microphones to declare that the problem is “guns.” They insist that if only we banned this weapon or restricted that accessory, shootings would stop. They blame inanimate objects instead of focusing on the people who actually pull the trigger. The recent shootings in Nashville (2023) and Minneapolis (2025) should force us to confront uncomfortable truths – not about firearms, but about what is happening inside our culture and what our leaders are pushing on the next generation.

    On March 27, 2023, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who identified as transgender, entered the Covenant School in Nashville and murdered three children and three adults. Hale had meticulously planned the attack, leaving behind writings showing an obsession with violence and a hatred of self. Police ultimately stopped the rampage, but not before families were destroyed forever.

    Two years later, on August 27, 2025, 23-year-old Robin Westman, a transgender woman and former student, opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during a back-to-school Mass. She killed two children, injured 17 more, and ultimately took her own life. Like Hale, Westman had left behind videos and a manifesto showing a disturbing fascination with mass shooters and a desire for infamy.

    In both cases, the evidence shows that the shooters were motivated not by their identity alone, but by a toxic blend of mental instability and self-loathing. The common thread is clear: both individuals were deeply troubled, and both had access to firearms despite glaring warning signs.

    Progressives scream “gun control” after each tragedy, but they refuse to address the elephant in the room: the mental state of those who commit mass shootings. The uncomfortable truth is that individuals struggling with deep identity conflicts, fueled by hormone treatments or rapid social transitions, are often at greater risk of instability. Pretending otherwise is reckless.

    New York Governor Kathy Hochul pushed through the so-called “ERA” amendment that enshrines the right for minors to undergo sex changes – without parental consent – into the state constitution. Hochul also banned body armor and raised the age for legal gun purchases after the Buffalo shooting. Yet she refuses to fix New York’s “Raise the Age” law, which effectively removes accountability for minors who possess or even use illegal guns.

    This trend extends well beyond New York. Across the US, “leaders” from both are implementing conflicting policies that reveal deep hypocrisy.

    So ask yourself: how is it logical to remove consequences for teenagers carrying illegal firearms, while simultaneously giving those same teens the ability to permanently alter their bodies with hormones and surgeries they cannot possibly understand? Progressives call it “compassion,” but the outcome is confusion, instability, and is leading to tragedy and violence.

    The question that no Democrat seems willing to answer is why they are so determined to push radical gender ideology onto children. Why the obsession with chemically and physically altering kids who are still developing, who are vulnerable, and who are easily influenced?

    These are irreversible decisions that can scar someone for life. Instead of helping children develop resilience, coping skills, and a healthy sense of self, progressives are telling them that their bodies are the enemy – and offering hormones and surgeries as the “solution.” For some, this sets the stage for severe mental health consequences. And when mental instability meets an obsession with notoriety and easy access to illegal firearms, tragedies like Nashville and Minneapolis become more likely.

    The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Democrats slammed President Trump when he banned transgender individuals from military service, claiming it was discriminatory. Yet these same leaders claim their top priority is “preventing gun violence.” How does it make sense to place individuals undergoing major hormone treatments – who may be struggling with identity or mental health – in positions where they are armed, trained for combat, and placed in volatile international environments? That’s not compassion; that’s recklessness.

    Progressives want to ban average Americans from owning body armor. They want to restrict legal gun ownership for law-abiding citizens. But they’re simultaneously handing confused kids hormones, protecting minors who carry illegal guns from accountability, and pushing for transgender inclusion in the armed forces. These contradictions are completely illogical and are flat out dangerous.

    The Nashville and Minneapolis shootings were not just random tragedies. They are warnings. They show what can happen when identity crises, untreated mental illness, and a culture of victimhood collide with a political movement more concerned with ideology than with reality.

    Instead of scapegoating firearms, lawmakers must confront the uncomfortable truth: our society is destabilizing children by stripping parents of authority, pushing radical ideology and fueling confusion with irreversible medical interventions. Add to this a justice system that coddles young offenders, and we are setting the stage for disaster.

    The solution isn’t simply more bans on law-abiding citizens. It’s accountability, honesty, and a serious national conversation about what we are doing to our kids. If we don’t stop pushing confused children down a path of irreversible harm, we should not be surprised when some of them end up in crisis – with tragic consequences for innocent families and communities.

    Until this self-inflicted crisis is resolved everyone in a bipartisan fashion should support ending the double standard where law-abiding, stable citizens face restrictions, policymakers ignore minors with illegal weapons or gloss over ideological factors that may contribute to instability and seriously consider the President’s idea to ban transgenders from obtaining deadly weapons.






  • Kamala doesn’t deserve Secret Service detail

    Kamala doesn’t deserve Secret Service detail

    I served nearly a decade on Secret Service protective details. That included guarding the lives of President Bush and Obama as well as former presidents Clinton, Ford and Carter. From that vantage point, President Trump’s decision to end protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris is notable but not shocking. It returns her status to what the law sets as the default and reflects how the protective mission is managed in practice.

    Federal law provides former vice presidents with Secret Service protection for six months after they leave office. After that window, the Secretary of Homeland Security can authorize temporary protection if conditions warrant it. That is the baseline professionals in the field plan around.

    In Harris’s case, coverage continued beyond six months because it had been extended. The new directive ends that extra period on September 1, 2025, which brings her back to the legal default rather than cutting short a statutory entitlement. That distinction matters when judging the decision.

    In recent years, the Secret Service has faced mounting strain as the number of protectees has grown well beyond historical norms. Political polarization, heightened threats against public officials and extended protection for family members have all expanded the agency’s protective footprint. This increase has stretched manpower, required more overtime and limited resources available for investigative and training functions. Agents are often diverted from traditional missions such as financial crimes or cyber investigations, underscoring how expanded protection has reshaped the Service’s overall capacity.

    What the headlines rarely capture is the operational math. Each protectee requires advance teams, site surveys, command posts, communications, motorcades and constant coordination with local police. Resources are not unlimited. Returning to the statutory baseline is one way leaders preserve depth on the missions that matter most.

    Extension decisions are always situational. Threat environment, travel profile and public visibility all factor in. I have seen extensions granted when the indicators supported it and I have seen details ramp down when risk normalized. The goal is not politics. It is matching coverage to credible risk while meeting other mandates.

    Ending federal coverage does not mean someone is unprotected. Private security teams can deliver close protection, advance work, and threat monitoring scaled to a private citizen’s life. The best of these firms coordinate with local law enforcement and follow many of the same protective principles we used in government. It is not identical to a federal detail, but it can be highly effective.

    One other point from inside the system. If a threat picture changes, the statute allows temporary protection to resume. That backstop exists so the government can surge again if the indicators justify it. The Service and DHS track those indicators even when a formal detail is not in place.

    So how should readers interpret this moment? Harris received more than the baseline. The decision to end that extra period falls within established authority and longstanding practice. It may be contentious in the political arena, but from a protective operations standpoint it is a defensible call grounded in statute, precedent and resource stewardship.

    The guidance is simple. Keep a professional security team in place, keep the threat assessment current, and keep communication lines open with local partners. That is how you stay both safe and practical once the federal detail steps back.

  • Muriel Bowser’s praise for Donald Trump

    Muriel Bowser’s praise for Donald Trump

    Mayor Muriel Bowser has found herself in the middle of a political tightrope – and it’s one that many Democrats may soon have to walk. In response to rising crime and public unease, the Washington, DC Mayor acknowledged something few in her party dare to admit: that Donald Trump’s federal “surge” of law enforcement officers actually made the city safer.

    “This federal surge has had a significant impact on crime in Washington, DC, and we greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser said at a press conference yesterday.

    That single sentence captures the dilemma of the modern Democratic party. At a time when progressive leaders downplay crime concerns as either exaggerated or rooted in right-wing fear-mongering, Bowser’s comments cut against the grain. She gave credit where it was due – to Trump – while at the same time rejecting his proposal to send in the National Guard. It’s an approach that shows both independence and restraint, and it highlights the broader challenge facing Democrats: how to be tough enough on crime to reassure the public without conceding the narrative to their opponents.

    The political class often gets stuck in a numbers game. In recent years, experts have pointed out that violent crime in DC has ebbed and flowed but is still lower than its early-1990s peak. Statistically, they’re right. But residents don’t live by long-term averages; they live by what they see on their block. In 2015, homicides in DC spiked by more than 50 percent compared to the year before. Robberies and assaults were also on the rise. You didn’t have to be a policy wonk to notice that the streets felt less safe.

    Bowser recognized that reality. Her acknowledgment that the federal surge “had a significant impact” shows she understands that people want to feel safe – when they walk home from the Metro, when their kids play outside, when they close up shop at night. Leaders who dismiss those fears as paranoia are telling voters, in effect, not to trust their own eyes. That is a losing strategy.

    At the same time, Bowser resisted Trump’s more heavy-handed solution: sending in the National Guard. On this point, she was absolutely right. Crime prevention is fundamentally a local responsibility. Residents expect their city officials and police department to take the lead, not the Pentagon. While a temporary boost from federal officers can help, relying on military deployment to patrol American streets sets a dangerous precedent. Conservatives, too, should be wary of normalizing that kind of federal overreach.

    Bowser’s willingness to draw a line here is noteworthy. She didn’t fall into the trap of reflexive partisanship – she praised what worked, rejected what didn’t and staked out a nuanced position. That’s leadership, whether you agree with her politics or not.

    Still, Bowser’s balancing act comes with risks. If residents continue to feel unsafe, they will credit Trump’s surge, not the mayor’s steady hand. Political perception mirrors public perception: voters reward whoever they believe made them safer, whether or not the data backs it up.

    That means Bowser could find herself outflanked from both sides. Progressives may accuse her of caving to Trump, while conservatives will argue she only validated what they’ve been saying all along. But if she manages to keep crime under control without ceding local authority, she may point the way forward for Democrats in other cities who face the same dilemma.

    The broader lesson is this: Democrats cannot afford to dismiss crime concerns as a manufactured talking point. Ordinary people don’t experience crime as an abstraction; they experience it as a daily reality that shapes their neighborhoods and their choices. If voters perceive that their leaders aren’t listening, they will turn to anyone who promises action – even if it’s a president they otherwise distrust.

    Bowser deserves credit for not joining the reflexive chorus of her party that insists crime concerns are invented. She recognized both the value of additional officers and the danger of military overreach. In doing so, she threaded a needle that her fellow Democrats may eventually need to follow.

  • Was the Minneapolis shooting an anti-Catholic hate crime?

    Was the Minneapolis shooting an anti-Catholic hate crime?

    “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, standing near the scene of yesterday’s Catholic school shooting in his city. “These kids were literally praying.” I think he was trying to say: “This is no time for empty platitudes” – or something similar. The words sounded horribly glib, though.

    Of course, the killing of children distresses all good people, and Mayor Frey should be forgiven for an emotional outburst. There is something telling, however, about his kneejerk hostility towards the natural religious response to horror; his instinctive rage against the idea of a God who lets evil happen.

    For a certain sort of metropolitan Democrat, Christianity is the impediment to, not the root of, justice. The secular liberal brain is trained to see Roman Catholicism, in particular, as wrong and harmful and needing to be stopped.

    From what we think we know about the unhappy mind of the suspected killer, a boy called Robert Westman who wanted to be a girl called Robin Westman, it seems the same hostility – relatively harmless in a politician such as Frey – turned into something far darker. In an image widely shared on social media, we see what appears to be the machine-gun magazine clip he used to kill two children and injure 17 more. “Where is your God?” is scrawled on the side. Westman, who went on to kill himself, had reportedly attended the Annunciation Catholic School – and his mother attended Mass at the affiliated Annunciation Catholic Church – that he decided to attack.

    FBI Director Kash Patel has said his agency is investigating the shooting as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate-crime targeting Catholics.” Others argue that it is a mistake to confuse nihilism with politics or anti-religious ideology. Westman’s social media scrawlings suggest a warped, manically depressed and insanely incoherent outlook.

    Yet western liberal loathing of Catholicism, which taps into a more traditional American Protestant phobia, has intensified in recent years. Today, mentally-ill people often latch on to that hatred in a violent way. Since May 2020, some 400 Catholic churches have been attacked. “Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism,” according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. In June this year, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, the chairman of the conference’s Committee for Religious Liberty, wrote to Congressional leaders urging them to provide more funds for the protection of religious places of worship. Earlier this month, a vandal smashed windows and set fire to the door of the Christ the King Catholic Church in Flint, Michigan.

    Catholics in America don’t expect or demand special protected-community status and no Christian wants to see sacred spaces turned into security zones. But there can be no denying that, as the latest reports suggest that American Catholicism is now entering a period of renewed growth, we are witnessing a concomitant outbreak of virulent anti-Catholicism in the land of the free. It’s an issue that the first American Pope might address in the coming days.

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  • The devastating cost of cashless bail

    The devastating cost of cashless bail

    The President taking such decisive action to save lives this past week is bittersweet beyond words. For years, we begged and pleaded for help to stop the insanity that has spilled blood across our streets. We went to the media. We testified before Congress. We sat across from lawmakers, poured out our stories and prayed someone would care enough to act. But time and time again, our cries fell on deaf ears.

    Now, finally, something is being done.

    For those who have never stood in our shoes, it’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved unnecessarily – to hold a folded flag or a photo instead of a spouse, child, sibling, or parent. We as victims went through the worst nightmare imaginable. And while we were trying to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives, politicians were busy patting themselves on the back for “social justice” reforms that only created more victims.

    We watched New York Democrats ram through bail reform, stripping judges of discretion and unleashing chaos. We watched elected officials like Kathy Hochul stand proudly on a stage and thank the families of killers as she signed legislation written by them – with no mention of the victims whose blood had been spilled, no acknowledgment of the grief their families will carry for the rest of their lives. Imagine the cruelty of that moment: to glorify those who destroyed lives, while erasing the memory of the ones they destroyed.

    Meanwhile, millions of taxpayer dollars have flowed into programs designed to support criminals – housing them, feeding them, offering them endless “second chances.” And what about us? The victims? We struggle day to day, financially and emotionally, often with no resources, no lifeline, no recognition. Families are left with empty chairs at the dinner table, mounting bills for funerals and therapy, and the haunting trauma that never goes away.

    This is the bitter reality we have lived with.

    And now, finally, there seems to be a light at the end of this dark, cold tunnel. President Trump’s executive order is a long-overdue acknowledgment that public safety must come first.

    For years, those in power denied there was even a problem. They told us crime was “down” while body bags piled up. They dismissed our stories as “anecdotes,” as if our dead loved ones were just numbers on a page. But we know the truth. Somewhere around 700 lives have been lost in New York alone because of bail reform. That’s 700 families destroyed, 700 names added to a list that never should have existed in the first place. And that’s only counting bail reform. When you add parole reform, when you add the revolving door for so-called “youthful offenders,” the number climbs even higher. Every one of those lives mattered. Every one of them had dreams, families, futures stolen in the name of “equity.”

    So yes, this moment is hopeful. But it is also painful. Because it never had to be this way.

    Imagine if leaders had listened when we first raised alarms. Imagine if victims’ voices carried the same weight as those of criminal justice activists funded by billionaires. Imagine if the grief of a mother burying her child mattered as much as the rehabilitation of the person who pulled the trigger. How many lives would have been saved?

    This executive order cannot bring back our loved ones. It cannot erase the trauma or fill the empty seats at holidays. But it can – and must – be the beginning of a long-overdue course correction. The vague language some critics point to could actually be its greatest strength, because it allows broad discretion to cut off taxpayer funding for any jurisdiction that uses it to release repeat offenders. Washington, D.C., for example, spent $88 million last year on programs that funneled offenders back onto the streets. That money should never have been spent on those who hurt our communities.

    Let’s be clear: this is not about vengeance. This is about prevention. This is about making sure no more families have to endure the pain we live with every single day. Recidivism is the heart of the problem in New York and everywhere these programs have been implemented – offenders being released over and over until someone gets killed. If this executive order helps break that cycle, then it is a step in the right direction.

    But let us never forget: every step forward comes too late for those we’ve already buried. Crime Victims are the only unwilling participants in the criminal justice system-everyone else chose their role, from Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and of course the offender.

    Yet nobody said pick me-pick me, I want to be a crime victim.

    So it’s the least our system can do is to offer a semblance of fairness and balance to the only unwilling participants: Victims of Crime.

    The victims are not here to thank the President, as grateful as our families are. They are not here to testify. They are not here to share their story. All we have are their names, their memories, and the responsibility to make sure their deaths were not in vain.

    This is the bittersweet truth: we are finally being heard, but only after far too much blood has been spilled.

  • Will Trump meet British woman, Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for a tweet?

    Will Trump meet British woman, Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for a tweet?

    “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

    Those 51 words earned Lucy Connolly – a babysitter from Northampton, in the East Midlands of England – the longest sentence ever handed down in the UK for a single social-media post. Last week, Connolly was released from prison, having served nine months of a 31-month term for “inciting racial hatred.”

    She will serve the rest of her sentence on probation. But she is not going back to a quiet life, it seems. Indeed, she is fast becoming a totem in the transatlantic culture war over Britain’s speech laws. Connolly is in touch with the Trump administration. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is spoiling to bring her to the US, to sit alongside him when he testifies to Congress next month about the parlous state of free speech in Britain – a stunt which will probably be scuppered by the travel restrictions imposed by Connolly’s early release.

    If that’s the case, Farage won’t struggle to find another mascot. Indeed, Connolly’s speech crime is almost unusual in that what she said was genuinely vile and inflammatory. You can be locked up for a lot less in the UK these days. At least 30 people a day are now arrested in the UK for what they post online. Said speech criminals include a feminist who dared to call a man a man on social media, and a prankster who posted a selfie of himself dressed like the Manchester Arena bomber.

    But Connolly’s case has undoubtedly struck a nerve, given the insanely harsh punishment she received and concerns that politics might have had something to do with it. Certainly, for the more Anglophile Trumpists, she has come to symbolize how far our two nations have drifted apart when it comes to freedom of speech.

    Connolly posted her life-ruining missive on X on July 29, 2024, hours after three young girls had been stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, a seaside town in the north-west of England. Misinformation had swirled online that the killer was an asylum seeker, one of the tens of thousands who have arrived in dinghies across the English Channel over recent years, and now reside in hundreds of hotels that have been requisitioned to house migrants while they wait for their asylum applications to be processed.

    In truth, the culprit was Axel Rudakubana, a depraved 17-year-old, the British-born son of Rwandan parents. He had long had a fixation on murder, terrorism and genocide. Connolly, having lost a child to medical malpractice, says she was left in a state of rage by Southport. The tweet was up for a few hours, and had been viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it. Apparently, she thought that would be the end of it.

    But then violence erupted across the nation. Scumbags began throwing bricks at mosques, tried to set hotels on fire and rampaged through minority areas, smashing windows and screaming racial slurs. Amid the worst anti-migrant riots Britain has seen in modern times, the message rang out that a firm hand would be shown not only to those engaging in racist violence, but also to those “whipping up this action online”, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer put it from the Downing Street podium.

    Of course it is absurd to blame this horrific unrest on a single tweet posted in Northampton. In the US, Connolly would have never seen the inside of a cell, given the hard-won protections of the First Amendment, under which incitement to violence is tightly defined, as speech both likely and intended to cause imminent violence.

    But Brits enjoy nothing like the same protections. Connolly was convicted of a far more nebulous crime of “stirring up racial hatred”. She was held in police custody and denied bail. She pleaded guilty, she claims, because she wanted to get back to her family as soon as possible, hoping for leniency. As it turned out, she received a heftier sentence than some of the rioters did.

    You need not believe Connolly is a political prisoner, as she and her supporters have dubbed her, to see the murky waters that surround her case. At the time she was hauled in by police, the words “Think before you post” were being blared out from government social-media accounts. Attorney General Richard Hermer, who has to sign off on all “incitement to racial hatred” prosecutions, issued what he called a “stark warning that you cannot hide behind your keyboard.”

    The decisions of cops, prosecutors and judges will obviously have been shaped by this climate. Indeed, just before sending down Connolly, Judge Melbourne Inman at Birmingham Crown Court took it upon himself to perform a paean to multiculturalism. “It is a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive”, he said. Connolly was later denied temporary leave, which would have granted her a few nights at home each month, even though she was a first-time offender and, by all accounts, a well-behaved inmate. Internal documents suggest this was due to “media interest”.

    Above all, questions hover over why Connolly was denied bail, which swayed her towards pleading guilty, fearing she would be in custody for months before trial. Ricky Jones, a Labour Party councillor, was acquitted earlier this month of encouraging violent disorder. Jones had addressed an “anti-racist” demonstration in London in the wake of the Southport riots, telling a whooping crowd that far-rightists should have their throats slit. He was bailed, and pleaded not guilty. The jury agreed.

    Connolly returns to a changed nation. Mercifully, the bigoted riots of last summer haven’t been repeated. In their place, peaceful protests have been held outside of migrant hotels, with mothers and grandmothers to the fore. In the Essex town of Epping, the Bell Hotel has just been ordered by a judge to close its doors to asylum seekers, following a string of charges brought against migrants in its care, including sexual assault and arson. Meanwhile, England and Union flags are being hoisted on lampposts by locals across the country, as part of a campaign calling itself Operation Raise the Colours, only for them to be ripped down by local councils. While Connolly’s ghastly tweet hardly spoke for the peaceful, patriotic majority, a sense of being silenced lingers.

    As Mr. Farage goes to Washington, with or without Ms. Connolly, Britain’s free-speech wars are going global. And no wonder. Once the cradle of liberalism, the UK is now a warning to the rest of the freedom-loving world. The UK’s decades-long experiment in policing hate – real and imagined – has produced nothing but fear, loathing and authoritarianism. Locking people up for tweets. This is what you get when you take a match to your liberties.

  • Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    President Donald Trump has signed off on a secret directive that, if activated, would let the US military hunt Mexican drug cartels the same way it once hunted al-Qaeda. Cartels branded as Foreign Terrorist Organizations could suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs of US drones, special forces and the full arsenal of counter-terror laws. Sinaloa, CJNG, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and even Nicolás Maduro’s own Cartel de los Soles are on the list.

    In Washington, the move is framed as a clean break with decades of failed “law enforcement” tactics. No more just DEA stings or financial sanctions, this is now a national security war. Marco Rubio put it bluntly: “We can’t continue treating these guys like local street gangs. They have weapons like terrorists. In some cases, they have armies; in many cases, they control Territory.”

    But here’s the catch: while the US postures about cartels as if they were ISIS, it’s also quietly negotiating with them.

    Courtrooms in New York and Chicago have told a very different story from the one emerging from the Pentagon. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was given life in prison without the death penalty because prosecutors promised Mexico he wouldn’t face execution. His sons, the Chapitos, are brokering plea deals that shave decades off potential sentences. Remarkably, some of his family members have received visas to live in the US.

    Other traffickers – men Washington brands as “terrorists” in press releases – end up in federal court trading testimony for lighter sentences, sometimes slipping into witness protection with new names and safe suburban lives. Washington will tell the public it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. The reality? It does, when the terrorists happen to move cocaine and fentanyl instead of flying planes into buildings.

    President Claudia Sheinbaum insists: “Our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale.”

    It’s a defiant stance rooted in history. US military interventions in Latin America rarely end without scars. But Mexico’s political class has another reason to keep Americans out. The cartel-politician nexus runs too deep. If US counter-terrorism teams start digging, they won’t just find stash houses in Sinaloa, they’ll find politicians fronting shell companies based in the US. For now, Sheinbaum’s drawing a hard boundary: They stay in their territory, we stay in ours. But Trump’s move shifts the power dynamic. Mexico is now being asked to cooperate in a framework that gives the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies more direct access to cartel Targets.

    Sheinbaum is drawing a line in the sand, but Trump’s directive shifts the power dynamic.

    Washington can now apply military, legal and financial pressure without formally crossing the border. Mexico is being cornered into cooperation, whether it admits it or not, leaving a wide-open back door for American intelligence operations.

    Once Washington slaps the “terrorist” label on a cartel, the rules change. What was once a cat-and-mouse chase run by the DEA turns into open season under the Pentagon’s counter-terror mandate. Suddenly, US special operations forces can treat cartel figures like battlefield targets.

    Surveillance drones circling over Baja California would no longer be limited to intelligence-gathering; they could be armed, authorized to strike. Special forces raids, once reserved for al-Qaeda camps in Yemen or ISIS safehouses in Syria, could theoretically land in the mountains of Sinaloa.

    The courtroom becomes another front line. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, families of victims are given the right to sue cartel bosses in American courts even decades later. The family of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, the DEA agent kidnapped, tortured, and killed in 1985, is already pushing such a case forward. The precedent is powerful: cartel leaders could now find their fortunes tied up in endless litigation, with victims’ families clawing at the offshore accounts and front companies that have shielded their wealth. What once looked like impunity shifts to exposure.

    The financial arena is just as critical. Washington has long wielded the Kingpin Act to sanction traffickers, but the terrorist designation broadens its reach. Now, entire financial ecosystems can be dismantled from shell corporations in Panama, to real estate holdings in El Paso neighborhoods, even US banks that turned a blind eye. The US has already tested this kind of economic warfare against Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, sanctioning Cartel de los Soles figures and seizing assets tied to the regime. Now, cartels don’t just risk arrest anymore; they risk having their political patrons and money men dragged into the open.

    Perhaps the most consequential shift is reach. Once branded as terrorists, cartel leaders are no longer fugitives ducking DEA indictments; they have become international targets. US law now follows them wherever they go. If a Sinaloa lieutenant turns up in Spain or a CJNG broker tries to do business in Canada, extradition isn’t just a matter of slow diplomacy; it’s counter-terror enforcement. The precedent here is Panama in 1989: Manuel Noriega, a sitting head of state with deep ties to cocaine trafficking, was captured by US forces in a military operation and hauled into a Miami courtroom. The message was simple then, and it echoes now: no corner of the globe is beyond reach when Washington decides to treat a trafficker as an enemy combatant.

    What Washington is signaling with the terrorist label is that the gloves are finally coming off.

    The cartels are no longer just drug syndicates; they are enemy networks, and the United States is prepared to dismantle them piece by piece, even if it means rewriting the rules along the way.

    But the contradiction is unfortunately glaring. In public, the US says cartels are terrorists. In private, prosecutors strike deals that let cartel lieutenants keep their lives, their families, sometimes even pieces of their fortunes.

    El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, convicted of helping run his empire, served just three years before walking free in Los Angeles. Compare that to Guantanamo detainees who have been rotting for decades without trial. Who gets treated like a terrorist?

    The hypocrisy isn’t lost on Mexico. When Americans talk about hunting cartel leaders like jihadists, Mexicans see the headlines. When Americans cut sweetheart deals with those same leaders’ families, Mexicans see the footnotes in court documents, and, coupled with the immense loss these very figures have inflicted on Mexican society, it is a blatant slap in the face for the countless victims.

    This war is no longer just about fentanyl or border security. It’s about what happens when the US decides to treat a criminal empire like a terror network but still plays by the old backroom rules of plea bargains, immunity and political convenience.

    For Washington, it’s a double game: sanctions and indictments for some, green cards and plea deals for others. For Mexico, it’s a nightmare. If the US ever stops negotiating and starts treating the cartels like ISIS, the fallout will be catastrophic. If it keeps playing both sides, the hypocrisy will eventually boil over.

    One way or another, sparks are starting to fly. And this time, they won’t just land on cartel strongholds in Sinaloa or Jalisco. They’ll land in the halls of power in both Washington and Mexico City.

  • Can Trump really send troops to Chicago and New York?

    Can Trump really send troops to Chicago and New York?

    President Trump has once again identified a critical national need: this time, it is the desperate plea for backup from overwhelmed local police, particularly in large metropolitan areas. 

    Under the Home Rule Act, the President possesses clear statutory authority to exercise at least temporary law enforcement authority over the nation’s capital city by federalizing the Washington D.C. police force and deploying 800 National Guard troops.

    The city’s own crime statistics depict a municipality raging out of control. Homicide rates have doubled in the last ten years. Washington, D.C. is one of the fifty most dangerous cities in the world and the fourth most dangerous city in the nation.

    Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects, President Trump possesses both the immediate authority and the responsibility to ensure the capital city does not descend into chaos if city leaders are not up to the job. 

    On Friday, Trump said he was considering deploying guardsmen to Chicago as well. “We’re going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago is a mess,” he said. “We’ll straighten that one out probably next. That will be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough.” He later mentioned New York as one of the cities he’d like the National Guard to “help.”

    But can the President take long-term police power of another major city? Methinks not, for all his best intentions in the face of our ordeals.

    Crime rates have risen dramatically in the last five years in the United States. In 2020, murder rates hit their highest single year jump, an astonishing 30 percent, in recorded domestic history. Carjackings in major cities increased 93 percent from 2019 to 2023; over half involved a firearm and nearly 30 percent resulted in injury or death. Last year, a rape occurred every four minutes.

    Metropolitan mayors defy federal law enforcement by declaring themselves sanctuary cities and sheltering criminal illegal aliens. Radical district attorneys disregard the legislative code and decriminalize heinous conduct. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, law enforcement leaders describe police morale, recruitment, and retention as down nationally. 

    All this grim news is top of mind for voters, 60 percent of whom said last year that stemming the rise of crime should be a top priority for the President and Congress to address. 

    However, Congressional power to create a national antidote to our criminal law problems, even with a Presidential blessing, is limited. Under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, “in areas such as criminal law enforcement… States historically have been sovereign.” Moreover, the federal government is a government of specific, enumerated powers. The Supreme Court repeatedly has held there is no “general federal police power.” 

    The President, acting alone to protect a modern American city other than Washington, D.C., would be on a heroic but likely ill-fated quest if the situation were something other than a temporary crisis (consider President Bush’s intervention in Los Angeles following the Rodney King riots in 1992), which could trigger the President’s authority under the Insurrection Act.

    So, for example, the evidently leaked proposal to create a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force“ made up of National Guard troops to quickly quell homegrown disturbances might be feasible under one of the aforementioned federal authorities, provided the unit was temporary, civil and deployed to one state at a time. There is nothing inherently unlawful about a rapid response team. However, under the President’s existing authority, there does not appear to be a mechanism to authorize a multijurisdictional National Guard “strike team” absent coordination with the respective state governors.

    A permanent, longstanding, roving federal police or military force has not yet been a feature of American domestic life. Except for war, insurrection or uncontainable turmoil such as riots, the chief responsibility for domestic public safety falls to local and state officials. For better or worse, outside the capital city, our Constitutional design ties the President’s hands to federalize all local police or deploy longstanding multijurisdictional military contingents. It is high time for local authorities to answer the police call for reserves.

  • Is Colombia reverting to chaos?

    Is Colombia reverting to chaos?

    Two terror attacks which hit Colombia on Thursday revealed a scary new level of sophistication among the country’s ever present narco-terrorists – and threatened to return the country to the violence and chaos that many had hoped it had finally escaped.

    The double terror strikes killed 18 people and involved a car bomb in Colombia’s third most populous city of Cali in which at least six people died, and an earlier drone downing of a police helicopter near the city of Medlllin – long notorious as Colombia’s drugs capital – in which 12 people died.

    The use of a drone is thought to be the first time that the 21st century weapon has been used by terrorists in Colombia, and indicates that a worrying new level of sophistication has been reached by the ruthless so called narco-terrorists.

    Colombia has been plagued for decades by violence perpetrated by drugs gangs controlled by millionaire barons who have made their fortunes producing and selling cocaine. At the same time until 2016 the country’s democratically elected governments were fighting a jungle war against the left-wing guerilla army the FARC and far right paramilitary groups.

    Like many Latin American states Colombia has a long history of alternating between dictatorship and democracy, but the explosion in its production of illicit narcotics since the 1970s to feed the ballooning markets in the US and Europe has fuelled and fed these political conflicts.

    Colombia was prostrated for ten years of civil conflict between 1948 and 1958 between the traditional ruling Liberal and Conservative parties. The fighting, known simply as “ La Violencia” killed an estimated 200, 000 people – or 1 in 50 Colombians.

    Hardly had ‘La Violencia’ ended with the rival parties forming a pact of national unity when the influence of Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in Cuba spawned guerilla rebellions launched by groups like FARC. At the same time the worldwide escalation in the demand for drugs saw the rise of drugs barons like Pablo Escobar, who accumulated so much wealth and bribed officials with their ill gotten gains that their criminal power came close to ousting elected governments. The Medillin Drugs cartel run by Escobar practically formed a criminal parallel regime to the legal government in the capital Bogota.

    Escobar and his bodyguards died in a gun battle with police in 1993, but other drugs lords picked up his torch and it became increasingly hard to differentiate between purely criminal violence and the political terror caused by groups like FARC. In 2016, after years of tortuous negotiations, the government reached a truce with FARC and the following year the guerillas laid down their arms and announced that they were transforming themselves into a legitimate political party.

    In 2022, the current President Gustavo Petro was elected as the first left-wing President in Colombia’s recent history and he has continued to pursue a peaceful path both with the far leftist groups who still use violence and the narco-terror criminal cartels.

    The latest two acts of terror are a hammer blow to the ever fragile peace process, and many fear that so long as the rest of the western world does drugs in industrial quantities the violence will continue.