Month: August 2025

 

The perpetrator of the August 27 Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis was 23-year-old Robin Westman (born Robert Westman), a transgender individual. According to ABC News, driver’s license records listed Westman as female, and a 2020 Minnesota district court order approved a name change from Robert to Robin after noting the minor “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

This was not the first transgender shooter, and not the first time a Christian school was targeted. The 2023 Nashville school shooting occurred on March 27 at The Covenant School. The shooter was identified as Aiden Hale (previously referred to by police as Audrey Elizabeth Hale), a 28-year-old former student of the school. Police initially identified the shooter as a woman but later confirmed Hale was transgender. Six people were killed in the attack, including three children, all nine years old.

The 2022 Colorado Springs Club Q shooting was another example. Because the nightclub catered to an LGBTQ audience, many initially assumed the attacker would be a white supremacist. Instead, the perpetrator was Anderson Lee Aldrich, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. The attack left five people dead and 19 others injured.

Additional incidents include the 2018 Aberdeen, Maryland, Rite Aid shooting, where 26-year-old Snochia Moseley, a transgender individual transitioning from female to male, killed three people and wounded three others at a distribution center before taking her own life.

In 2019, at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado, 16-year-old Alec McKinney (born Maya McKinney), a transgender boy, carried out a shooting with an accomplice that left one person dead and eight others injured. McKinney told police he specifically targeted students who mocked his gender identity and admitted he had been planning the attack for weeks.

One of the most bizarre and far-reaching murder rings in recent years is the Vegan Transgender Extremist Zizian Cult, a group of about 30 members, mostly young transgender women, linked to at least six murders and labeled as extremists by U.S. law enforcement. The group was led by Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a 34-year-old transgender woman with a computer science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks who once interned at NASA.

Writing under the name “Ziz,” LaSota published disturbing theories claiming that each brain hemisphere has a separate gender identity and that these identities often desire to kill one another.

Members practiced “unihemispheric sleep,” attempting to sleep with one eye open to prevent one hemisphere from “destroying” the other, a philosophy that has reportedly contributed to suicides within the cult.

Several members became key figures in violent crimes. Michelle Zajko, 32, was tied to the murder of her parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, who were shot to death in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 2022. Daniel Blank, 26, Zajko’s Vermont housemate who has been described as having Asperger’s syndrome, was also involved. In November 2022 in Vallejo, California, Zizian members attacked an 80-year-old landlord, impaling him with a sword and blinding him in one eye; the victim fatally shot one assailant in self-defense.

The same landlord, Curtis Lind, was later stabbed to death on January 17, 2025, with Maximilian Snyder charged in the killing. Just days later, on January 20 in Coventry, Vermont, U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, was killed during a shootout after a traffic stop. Zizian member Teresa Youngblut, 21, is accused of opening fire, while another member, Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt, was also killed in the exchange.

The wave of violence culminated on February 16, 2025, when LaSota, Zajko, and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland. They were found trespassing on private property while dressed in black and carrying weapons. LaSota, described by prosecutors as the leader of the extremist Zizians, was ordered held without bail.

One of the most disturbing prevented cases involved Elizabeth Ballesteros West, formerly Francisco Frank Paramo, a 56-year-old transgender woman from Cottage Grove, Oregon. West was arrested by the FBI in January 2024 for allegedly plotting a mass shooting at her workplace over claims of “transphobia.” Federal prosecutors charged her with interstate threatening communications.

The investigation began after West posted alarming messages on a transgender support Facebook page on September 26, 2023. She wrote that she was “at the end of my rope,” feared losing her job, and declared she had “no alternative” after being bullied by “transphobic a**holes.” She added, “I’ll probably have to go out in a blaze of glory.” Beyond her workplace, West expressed violent intentions toward Jews and Black people and openly embraced neo-Nazi ideology.

When the FBI searched her property, agents discovered a massive weapons cache: 11 handguns, 16 rifles, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, gun accessories, dozens of violent drawings, and a notebook titled Black Shadow Journal. According to an FBI informant, West had a history of reckless behavior, once playing Russian roulette during Christmas 2022 while in a dissociative state. She had also been arrested in 1993 for placing a shotgun in her father’s mouth and pulling the trigger, though the case was later dropped.

West’s personal history revealed long-standing mental health struggles, including diagnoses of bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and PTSD. The FBI also tied her to white supremacist activity, noting she and her boyfriend had attended neo-Nazi rallies in Washington state and even hosted participants at their home. Her social media was filled with memes and propaganda glorifying Hitler, promoting racial violence, and threatening mass attacks.

During initial interviews, West downplayed the threats, claiming she was only projecting suicidal thoughts while struggling with the stress of gender transition. This raises broader concerns about undiagnosed mental health issues and the possible effects of hormone use.

A research report published in PubMed Central found that approximately 58 percent of transgender patients had at least one DSM-5 diagnosis, compared with 13.6 percent of cisgender patients. Similarly, a study published in ScienceDirect concluded that transgender people are about six times more likely than the general population to suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, findings echoed in the American Journal of Psychiatry’s review of treatment utilization.

Recent surveys reinforce this troubling pattern. The 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People reported that 71 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth experienced anxiety symptoms, while 44.4 percent reported recent suicidal ideation and nearly 7 percent admitted to a recent suicide attempt.

The post Trans Killers: Minnesota Was Not the First appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Foreign Affairs

Singapore’s Real Lesson for Britain and Europe

In a multiethnic and democratic society, there needs to be imperial order and colonial-style policing. 

I love Singapore. It’s a favorite city of mine, and on those mornings when I am feeling too cosmopolitan, I can imagine myself living there again. I was there for a few weeks a decade back, and it is a paradise compared to most western cities. What’s not to like? It is clean, orderly, modern, and civilized: a perfect city-state. And in an era of resentment and social upheavals across the west, it is a bastion of old-school, conservative political stability. 

As recently reported by my colleague Spencer Neale, Singapore saw “its first Singaporean parliamentary election since the election of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in 2024, the People’s Action Party (PAP) won a decisive victory Saturday, capturing 87 seats in the city-state’s 97-seat Parliament.” PAP’s landslide victory gives Singapore’s ruling party a clear mandate heading into the future. Of the nearly 3 million people registered to vote on the island, more than 65 percent of voters selected PAP, giving the ruling party its 14th consecutive win for PAP since independence. Unusually consistent for our times. 

It seems odd to start a column about a febrile mood in Britain and Europe with a paean to Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) and Singapore. But for those who are not afflicted with myopia, they are connected. There are a few types of slop available on social media. One particular genre consists of cherry-picked and unoriginal quotes from LKY, Singapore’s legendary founding father and Anglophile ruler who transformed a backwater port city-state to a modern nation.  Singapore itself is an actually existing multiracial society, with three main groups: the Singaporean Chinese with around 75 percent of the population, the Malays with around 15 percent, followed by the Indians around 9 percent of the total. The rest are Europeans, other Asians, and Pacific Islanders. And yet there is no racial reaction, nor much crime, nor civil discontent.

But LKY can at most be considered a classical liberal—a fact that might chagrin the dissident right is that he was hugely admired by none other than Tony Blair. Blair visited Lee in Singapore, and the former prime minister has reportedly said that Lee is the smartest leader he ever met.

Whatever one might say of Blair, he was competent. He learned from Lee to have that competent government, although channeled towards destructive social policies in Britain. Mode of governance can do nothing if the worldview that underpins it is toxic.  

Because it is the Blairite British state that is now considered illegitimate by a significant chunk of Britons. I don’t think there’s a civil war scenario in Britain (or Europe) yet: First, arms are not so prevalent as in, say, the Middle East or Latin America; second, the state capacity is robust enough to oppose any foreign intervention and steady supply of weaponry; third, the state still maintains a monopoly on violence. Nevertheless, the chances of permanent sectarian strife are increasing; such strife might lead to capital outflow and even, eventually, make civilized government impossible. The root causes—from mass-migration to sectarian ghettos to the absence of any unifying national mythos to rape gangs and violence against the most vulnerable and fatherless—can be attributed to the Blairite conception of state, which is a minoritarian entity maximizing secular concepts of human rights while also reducing state capacity and undermining impartial justice. If the gendarmerie were to crack down harshly on both juvenile and migrant crime regardless of race or gender, Scottish teenagers would stop carrying knives to protect themselves from predatory migrants. It is really that simple. 

The problems facing Britain, Europe, and of course the U.S. have simple solutions. LKY is a guide towards them. In a society that is basically unalterably multiethnic (as is the rest of the Anglosphere), if you want to maintain some form of democracy, enforcement of order must be considered supreme. As LKY said, a society cannot have democracy, liberty, and order all at the same time; a corollary is that you cannot have mass democracy, social liberalism, and multiracial society all at the same time. You have to get rid of one. There is a fundamental tension between democracy and order in modern, multiethnic states; the coexistence of maximal democratic expression and social stability is inherently unattainable. 

Democracy in its basic form presupposes a homogenous societal ethos, cultural coherence, and mutual informational hegemony among citizens. None of these are present in the current Western states for various historical reasons. Absent these, excessive democratic freedoms and individual rights result in cultural cocoons and encourage sectarian disorder, ultimately rendering authoritarianism inevitable. Lee said, “The main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.”

Multiethnic societies, in simple words, demand imperial-style law and order, and not lax policing or two-tiered justice systems: the first encourages disorder and authoritarianism, and the second encourages revolution. Lee, a keen British student of history, surely must have studied the Mahabharata, in which Bhishma counsels Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava prince, that the perpetuation of arajakata (anarchy) is the gravest failing of a ruler. 

Multipolarity’s logical and inevitable end would be a return to a pre–First World War order. That part of the debate is settled. How major powers manage to navigate that is the key future research question. Liberals, as is becoming evident from Europe, will eventually revert back to choosing order over democracy when push comes to shove. One might soon get a continent-size Singapore after all. But for those in the Anglosphere who still desire liberty and democracy, imperial-style race-neutral policing would solve the liberal dilemma. 

The post Singapore’s Real Lesson for Britain and Europe appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs

How U.S. Support for Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Imperils Diplomacy

Since the Cold War, Washington has empowered violent anti-Russian extremists. 

As a negotiated settlement of the Russia–Ukraine war becomes more likely, President Volodymyr Zelensky faces a major obstacle to peace that comes not from Moscow, but from ultranationalist and neo-Nazi forces inside his own country.

In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Serhii Sternenko—a leader of the paramilitary group Right Sector, which was founded by neo-Nazis—warned Zelensky that if he ceded any territory to Russia in a peace deal, “he would be a corpse—politically, and then for real.”

Though the Times presents him merely as a “civil activist,” Sternenko served as the head of Right Sector’s Odessa branch, where he oversaw the extremist group’s 2014 crime spree that culminated in the Odessa trade union hall massacre in which militants used Molotov cocktails to burn alive more than 40 antigovernment protestors.

The Times characterizes the Odessa trade union hall massacre as mere “clashes” and fails to attribute the violence to any one particular side, despite the fact that the Right Sector proudly claimed responsibility for it.

Whitewashing Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist right is neither new nor accidental. As the late Stephen Cohen, an eminent scholar of U.S.–Russia relations, warned nearly a decade ago, Western journalists and officials, by downplaying Ukraine’s right-wing militant groups and parroting Kiev’s official claims about them, empowered violent extremists.

The resurgence of Ukraine’s right-wing extremist forces is inseparable from U.S. policy since 2014, when the U.S. facilitated the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Kiev. While Ukrainian liberals participated in the “Maidan Revolution,” the muscle was provided by right-wing extremist groups, which the West bestowed with legitimacy and, eventually, access to arms and funding. What began as the whitewashing of neo-Nazi vigilantes became the normalization of neo-Nazi battalions, which are now embedded in Ukraine’s security elite.

That those same right-wing extremist forces, nurtured by the United States and NATO, now threaten to sabotage a peace deal and overthrow the Zelensky government reveals a bizarre paradox at the heart of our involvement in Ukraine that has yet to be confronted:

Washington interfered in Ukrainian domestic politics and helped finance a proxy war with Russia ostensibly to save Ukrainian democracy from tyranny. But under U.S. tutelage—and in service of proxy war aims—Ukraine has rapidly descended into a more authoritarian state.

Western whitewashing of Ukrainian Nazis is not an aberration of the past decade. Rather, it is consistent with a U.S. strategy that began during the Cold War of recruiting, laundering, and weaponizing extremist forces.

One of the earliest and clearest cases of this strategy was the CIA’s decision to protect rather than prosecute Ukraine’s wartime nationalists, who had openly collaborated with Nazi Germany and perpetrated the mass murder of Jews and Poles. Among them was Stepan Bandera and his OUN-B militant group, which aligned itself with Ukraine’s Nazi “liberators” within the first days of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941, when the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union. 

America’s nascent post-war national security state, despite its awareness of Bandera’s Nazi crimes and his organization’s status as “primarily a terrorist organization,” protected Bandera from extradition to the Soviet Union, recruiting him and other known OUN-B Nazi collaborators through programs like the CIA’s Project AERODYNAMIC, aimed at “exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance for cold war and hot war purposes.”

Rather than being a source of national shame for Ukraine, its Nazi collaborators are the core icons of Ukrainian nationalism and a source of pride.

Along with Bandera, historical war criminals like Roman Shukhevych—the commander of the OUN-B’s paramilitary wing—have been posthumously venerated by various Ukrainian governments. Both figures were awarded the official title “Hero of Ukraine” in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Bandera’s birthday continues to be celebrated with annual torchlight marches across the country.

During the Maidan uprising in 2014, neo-Nazi militias inspired by Stepan Bandera and associated with Ukraine’s right-wing extremist Svoboda party used sniper rifles to massacre protestors—both pro- and antigovernment—as well as police. 

Though the Maidan massacre trials would later pin responsibility for the violence on neo-Nazi paramilitaries from the Right Sector and the political party Svoboda, the chaos was immediately seized upon by the Obama administration to demand the removal of Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Victor Yanykovych, who was instantly blamed for it all.

A leaked U.S. State Department call arguably reveals how career diplomat Victoria Nuland arranged for Svododa leader Oleh Tyahnybok to have a position of influence in Kiev’s post-revolution government, saying her handpicked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk should “be on the phone” with the Svoboda leader “four times a week.” The notorious call, along with other evidence of U.S. support for anti-Yanykovych forces, has led many to conclude the “Maidan Revolution” was in fact a U.S.-backed coup.

Washington’s decision in 2014 to protect and empower the extremist groups which perpetrated the Maidan massacre would entrench an ultranationalist and neo-Nazi element within Ukrainian politics that would later sabotage efforts for peace with Russia.

When Zelensky came to power on a promise to resolve the conflict with Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Cohen predicted that the new president’s peace efforts would likely face heavy and possibly violent resistance from the ultranationalist factions that Washington had recently empowered. “His life is being threatened by a quasi-fascist movement,” Cohen warned. 

The Biden administration did not look the other way in the face of those extremist forces threatening Zelensky—it looked directly at them and in June 2024 decided to remove State Department restrictions on funding the Azov Battalion, allowing the U.S. government to lavish the neo-Nazi group with weapons. 

Under the patronage of President Joe Biden and NATO, Azov—whose members often openly wore Nazi insignia—metastasized from a battalion into an entire brigade integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard.

Biden’s policy was at least consistent, conforming with a decades-long policy of protecting, retooling, and empowering violent extremist groups whenever they served the interests of unelected national security state elites, in this case, anti-Russian neocons.

Earlier this year, Azov further consolidated its influence within Ukraine’s national security apparatus by expanding into multiple corps. Its political reach grew in parallel, with members appointed to key government positions, including Oleksandr Alferov as Director of the Institute of National Memory, giving the neo-Nazi group direct influence over both security policy and the framing of Ukraine’s historical narrative.

Violent Ukrainian nationalist forces like Right Sector, Azov, and Sternenko’s militants have become indispensable foot soldiers in Washington’s project, and therefore their lengthy record of violence and terrorism has been obscured. Even as Zelensky now faces threats to his life from these same forces, they are still celebrated in Western media as heroes of democracy.

The paradox is revealing: The very groups hailed as Ukraine’s “defenders of democracy” are also those eroding it from within, threatening to assassinate the president if he pursues peace. Though an unintended consequence, this perilous dynamic flows from U.S. policy and reveals its true aims.

The U.S. strategy in Ukraine was never about protecting Ukrainian democracy. It was—as Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted—about sustaining a proxy war to “weaken Russia.” The emergence of violent antidemocratic forces in Kiev has not been a casualty of that strategy, but its central instrument.

The post How U.S. Support for Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Imperils Diplomacy appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics

The White House’s Bizarre Defense of Chinese Foreign Students

Colleges would shut down without more foreigners? That’s a win-win.

President Donald Trump recently announced that America will take in 600,000 Chinese foreign students, outraging much of MAGA. While the White House has clarified this is a continuation of existing policy, the move appears anathema to the spirit of America First, and prominent commentators criticized the president for suggesting it.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump supporter, grilled Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the matter on her show this week.

“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” she asked Lutnick.

The cabinet secretary offered a curious defense of the proposal: It’s necessary to save American universities. “Well, the president’s point of view is that what would happen if you didn’t have those 600,000 students is that you’d empty them from the top, all the students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America,” Lutnick replied. “So, his view is he’s taking a rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump.”

This argument makes the case for Chinese students worse. The Trump administration has been eager to tell American kids to not go to college and instead work in factories or go to trade school. That may be good advice for some Americans—but it looks terrible when you advocate for foreigners to take up the prime spots at elite universities. The implication is that Americans, but not foreign guests, are only supposed to go to the non-elite schools or forego college altogether. 

Moreover, this pro-Chinese student argument undermines Trump’s war with the universities and his attempts to stifle foreign subversion. It makes no sense to try saving the current university system in its corrupt state, much less to import more foreigners to fulfill that aim.

The sudden change of heart about universities is odd. The administration has tried to cut funding to higher education, claiming colleges are too beholden to DEI and wokeness to deserve taxpayer dollars. The administration has reduced the number of foreign student visas, particularly those handed out to China. Trump himself has claimed these students can pose national security risks through espionage and other means. A number of foreign students have been implicated in spying for the Chinese Communist Party.

If universities are at risk of collapse and this would devastate our economy, wouldn’t it make sense for our nation’s top universities to focus more on recruiting Americans? It’s strange for Lutnick to ignore this possible solution and to treat a lack of Chinese students as an inevitable nightmare.

While the commerce secretary now feels frightened about what might happen to American colleges, he struck a different tone when defending the president’s tariffs back in the spring. Lutnick said we needed to push Americans in white-collar work into manufacturing jobs. “It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick told CNBC last May. “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

He’s not an outlier in this messaging. Administration officials and conservative pundits regularly make such appeals. The Department of Labor’s X account recently asserted that trade school grads make more money than college grads. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared in May: “Electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University.” Elon Musk regularly touts the superiority of going into trades rather than college (while also claiming we need college-educated migrants to fill jobs in the tech industry). 

Consistency is needed here. If the administration sees universities as the enemy and a college degree as over-valued, it shouldn’t trouble itself with the number of campuses that disappear. It should instead encourage more young people to follow the trade school path promoted by the White House. It should also be happy to reduce the demand for foreign students and ensure we have fewer Chinese spies in the U.S. These moves would serve the Trump administration’s agenda.

However, the administration’s line casts its main message aside for the worst kind of inconsistency. It tells Americans one thing and foreigners another: As a young American, you’re only supposed to do blue-collar work—regardless of your interests and aptitudes—while elite schools and white-collar jobs are for foreigners. That’s not the intended message, of course. But it’s easy to think it is when the administration can’t maintain a consistent line.

Trump’s reasoning for supporting the Chinese visas is tied with trade negotiations. China demands that America continue to allow its citizens to study in the country. The president may think it’s necessary for any tariff agreement to keep this arrangement. He’s also likely hearing from college lobbyists who want their foreign cash cows to continue paying full tuition. Advisers may tell him it could cause some serious economic pain if university admissions continue to plunge.

But it’s not compelling to tell the American public “we’re allowing in Chinese foreign students as part of trade negotiations.” Officials probably think it’s better to pitch it instead as a necessity for American universities—despite conservatives’ hostility towards these institutions.

While it may be understandable for the president to stick up for Chinese foreign students, it’s still wrong. It would be much better for America to curb the Middle Kingdom’s foreign visas and let several colleges shut down. It may cause some short-term economic pain, but the long-term gains would make up for it. Many problems with American higher education would be solved. There is too much bloat, too many degrees, and too much nonsense within the Ivory Tower. A significant downsizing of the market would improve the situation and weaken one of the left’s chief institutions.

Chinese foreign students exploit our generosity for the benefit of a hostile power. There is no reason we should train their elite, helping make China the dominant global power. If given the choice between a trade deal or a restriction on foreign student visas, the restriction is better for the national interest.

The Trump administration has made tremendous strides in curtailing illegal immigration, DEI, and other harmful liberal programs. The second term has greatly exceeded the accomplishments of the first—and there are still three more years to go. 

But no president is perfect, and Trump is bound to make mistakes. The support for Chinese foreign students is one of them. Thankfully, there is still time for the administration to do the right thing, listen to the MAGA base, and reverse this terrible policy. We can’t make America great again if we indulge higher education’s Chinese addiction.

The post The White House’s Bizarre Defense of Chinese Foreign Students appeared first on The American Conservative.

A dark money group on the left is paying progressive influencers up to $8,000 a month to push Democrat policy ideas. Must be nice.

This is so typical. For all of the Democrats’ talk of getting ‘big money’ out of politics, they are the worst culprits of using big money to advance their agenda when it suits them.

The New York Post reports:

‘Dark money’ group paying pro-Dem influencers up to $8K a month: report

A secretive dark money group tied to the Democratic Party is paying online influencers up to $8,000 a month to disseminate left-leaning talking points, according to a report.

The “Chorus Creator Incubator Program” is said to be funded by the “Sixteen Thirty Fund,” a nonprofit sometimes portrayed as the left’s answer to the Koch network and which has funneled money to dozens of Democratic-friendly influencers, according to WIRED magazine.

The names attached to the program span some of the most recognizable liberal voices online.

They include Olivia Julianna, the Gen Z activist who spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention; Loren Piretra, a former Playboy executive turned Occupy Democrats YouTuber; and Barrett Adair, the content creator who runs a viral American Girl Doll–themed meme account.

The program also includes Suzanne Lambert, who styles herself a “Regina George liberal”; Arielle Fodor, a teacher with 1.4 million TikTok followers; Sander Jennings, the TLC reality star and older brother of trans influencer Jazz Jennings; and David Pakman, host of a YouTube show.

More from the story in Wired:

“There are some real great advantages to … housing this program in a nonprofit,” Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Chorus, said to creators on a Zoom call reviewed by WIRED. “It gives us the ability to raise money from donors. It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers—you know, ‘Paid for by blah blah blah blah’—that you see on political ads. We don’t need to deal with any of that. Your names aren’t showing up on, like, reports filed with the FEC.” (Wilson did not reply to a request for comment.)

Really makes you wonder if they believe what they say or they say what they say only for pay. https://t.co/EpY8AhAxpJ

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) August 28, 2025

If they are willing to pay $8k a month of their own money on no name influencers, imagine how they treat your tax dollars https://t.co/Vbyga3Aosb

— Harrison Krank (@HarrisonKrank) August 28, 2025

This is how popular Democrat ideas are. So popular that they have to pay people a ton of cash to advance them.

The post Democrat Policies Are so Unpopular That a Dark Money Group is Paying Progressive Influencers $8K a Month to Push Them appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

When it comes to the fundraising race, the Democrat party is way behind Republicans. The DNC currently has about $13 million on hand while the RNC is sitting on a nest egg of about $84 million.

One of the things that’s hurting the DNC is that they’re still struggling to help pay off the debt from the failed Kamala Harris campaign. She spent more than a billion dollars in a matter of months last fall and somehow still came up millions of dollars short with nothing to show for it.

Harris has tried to help the party with their fundraising efforts but for some strange reason, it’s just not working out.

FOX News reports:

Kamala Harris fundraising events have been a flop to help raise money for DNC: report

Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ fundraising events for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have fallen short, according to Axios, as the DNC has continued to pay off the former presidential nominee’s campaign expenses.

Harris allowed the DNC to use her email list to help raise funds, according to Axios. She has also reportedly held a few small fundraising events.

“But the total money raised from the events has been disappointing,” Axios reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

After Harris lost to President Donald Trump in 2024, top Democrats expressed concern about potential campaign debt.

“How do you raise a historic amount of money and not win a single swing state?” one Harris aide told Axios in November, following the election loss. “The honest answer is: I don’t know. It seems we lost the national narrative, and that’s what we need to diagnose.”

In addition to this, people who are donating to the DNC now, probably think they’re giving money to support new initiatives and candidates, not realizing that they’re just helping to pay down the Harris campaign debt.

NYTIMES: Kamala Harris ended her failed $1.5 billion campaign with $20 million in unpaid bills, which the DNC had secretly agreed to cover. Since then, Harris has been raising money from donors without disclosing the money was actually gong to pay off her campaign debt! pic.twitter.com/ivPKrrfGCM

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 25, 2025

Money isn’t everything in politics but the Democrats aren’t even liquid. They’re still paying off an election that happened almost a year ago. It’s a terrible position to be in at this stage of the game.

The post Cash-Poor Democrats Are STILL Struggling to Bail Out the Failed Kamala Harris Campaign and Her Efforts to Help Them Have Failed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the arrest in Mexico Thursday of 27-year-old Gabriel Calixto-Picardo in the brutal stabbing death of his girlfriend, immigrant activist Emma Shafer, 24, that occurred at Shafer’s Springfield, Illinois home on July 11, 2023.

Calixto was brought to the U.S. by his mother when he was 5 years old and had DACA status until he was jailed for kidnapping a previous girlfriend who says Calixto was later granted asylum after he was released from prison in 2021 and after his deportation case was dropped because of fears of torture in his native Mexico.

Noem highlighted Shafer’s murder in a visit to Springfield earlier this year. Noem was denounced by Shafer’s mother, who joined a protest against Noem and complained she had not given permission for Noem to speak about her daughter.

The vicious illegal alien murderer who has been evading justice for two years after stabbing 24-year-old Emma Shafer has been ARRESTED. We will continue to work with federal authorities to coordinate extradition proceedings.

THANK YOU to our law enforcement partners for bringing this perpetrator to justice.

The vicious illegal alien murderer who has been evading justice for two years after stabbing 24-year-old Emma Shafer has been ARRESTED. We will continue to work with federal authorities to coordinate extradition proceedings.

THANK YOU to our law enforcement partners for… pic.twitter.com/ur3RBebSlM

— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) August 28, 2025

WAND-TV report on the murder (excerpt):

In July 2023, police responded to the 1000 block of S. 8th Street after a call from a woman saying her brother had injured his girlfriend.

When they arrived, officers found Shafer stabbed to death. A short time later, a warrant was issued for Calixto’s arrest.

NPR Illinois reported on the arrest of Calixto and the background of Shafer (excerpt):

Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser, the Springfield Police Department, and the U.S. Marshals Service announced today that Gabriel P. Calixto, wanted in connection with the 2023 murder of 24-year-old Emma Shafer, has been apprehended in Mexico.

Calixto was indicted by a Sangamon County Grand Jury and is charged with three counts of First-Degree Murder and one count of Aggravated Domestic Battery.

On July 11, 2023, Springfield Police officers responded to a residence in the 1000 block of South 8th Street, where they discovered Ms. Shafer deceased. Shafer, 24, was found dead in her home. The Sangamon County Coroner said Shafer sustained multiple sharp force injuries.

Shafer has been described as a young woman intent on making a difference. She was the membership chair of the Sierra Club Sangamon Valley Group, an incoming board member for the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network, a former organizer with Faith Coalition for the Common Good, and an active volunteer with countless other community groups.

The Illinois Eagle described Shafer as being involved with the Resistor Sisterhood (excerpt):

Shafer was part of the leadership council of Resister Sisterhood, a Springfield activist group advocating for progressive causes. She had been active in work for the LGBTQ community, fighting for women’s rights, and bodily autonomy.

Excerpt from Shafer’s obituary:

Emma Marie Shafer, 24, community organizer, died July 11, 2023. A Springfield native born on April 13, 1999, she graduated from Springfield High School, received an Associate Degree in Political Science at Lincoln Land Community College, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Studies from the New School in New York City. She was the membership chair of the Sierra Club Sangamon Valley Group, an incoming board member for the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network, a former organizer with Faith Coalition for the Common Good, and an active volunteer with countless other community groups.

…From early childhood, Emma pursued twin passions — theater and social justice…

…Emma was a life-long activist. Even as a child, she tended to go sit with the kid eating lunch alone and recruit her friends to join them. She recognized inequities in the way certain classmates were treated and spoke up to ask adults to realize the harm they were causing. As a teenager, she participated in several youth service projects with Westminster Presbyterian Church, such as helping repair homes for low-income families in Appalachia and later joined the Appalachian Service Project staff. Emma was very involved in public office, serving as an intern in the office of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Fellow in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, and a committee clerk at the State of Illinois House of Representatives. At the time of her death, she was making special concoctions and connections at The Wakery. She then had just been hired to work for M.H. Action, where she was looking forward to advocating for the rights of people who live in manufactured homes.

…Her favorite part of organizing was canvassing — going door-to-door and meeting people to hear and address any concerns they had, always working towards a more equitable community. Held hour-long one-on-one meetings with anyone who had a cause, usually scheduling those meetings at a downtown local business. She hosted weekly “soup night” gatherings in her home, bringing together advocates she believed needed to know each other.

2023 WAND-TV report on Calixto’s kidnapping of ex-girlfriend Kathryn O’Brien and his immigration status (excerpt):

(Note: there is a host of information in this article. Please click through for the entire WAND report.)

WAND News is learning more about the criminal record of Gabriel Calixto Pichardo. Calixto was initially charged with violating an order of protection, aggravated kidnapping and unlawful restraint after a 2018 kidnapping incident. Calixto agreed to plea guilty to a kidnapping charge and was sentenced to six years in prison.

In 2020, court records show Calixto’s plea was vacated for constitutional reasons. He immediately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, unlawful restraint, and was resentenced to six years behind bars. However, he was released early.

WAND News asked the Madison County State’s Attorney what the constitutional reasons were, to allow Calixto to plea to a lesser felony charge.

State’s Attorney Thomas Haine released the following statement:

“We offer our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Emma Shafer. What transpired here is deeply disturbing and upsetting. In October 2020, prior to my administration, this defendant’s guilty plea was modified. The reason for this modification is frustratingly unclear. There was no hearing held on the modification, and there is no transcript. The employment of the former assistant state’s attorney responsible for this modification terminated in February 2021. My office will continue to assist the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s Office and the other authorities in Sangamon County in any manner.”

More:

…About six months after he was released in the kidnapping case, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Calixto. He was charged with improper entry and the Department of Homeland Security began removal proceedings.

Court records show Calixto was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by his mom when he was five years old. He was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status—or DACA—when he was 15. But his status expired while in prison, and he was no longer eligible for DACA because he had committed a felony.

Court records show U.S. Attorneys ultimately declined to prosecute him for improper entry. WAND reached out to learn why the case was dropped.

“I’m restricted to providing only the information that’s contained in the publicly-filed court documents, and the office will not be releasing further comment at this time,” a spokeswoman shared in a statement to WAND News.

Calixto had filed an application for asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture, based on his fear of harm in Mexico due to his severe mental illness. O’Brien told WAND News that Calixto was allowed to stay in the United States because he was granted this asylum status.

…Just two years after Calixto was released on bond by immigration officials, he was accused of murdering Shafer. Weeks after the murder, Calixto is still on the run.

WCIA-TV reported on Noem’s visit to Springfield last May where spoke in front of Shafer’s home where she was murdered. In the video report, an activist ally of Shafer’s said Emma would have been out protesting Noem that day (well, if she hadn’t been murdered by her illegal alien boyfriend.)

Excerpt:

On Wednesday, Noem speculated about Shafer’s case and used her death as a political talking point, and not only without her family’s consent, but while Shafer’s mother was actively protesting Noem’s trip to Springfield.

…Following Noem’s speech, Shafer’s family members released a statement expressing their disappointment:

My daughter Emma radiated love and light everywhere she went and for all people. Even as a child, she was a friend to everyone and someone who spoke up for the less fortunate. She dedicated her life – her career and her free time – to causes of social justice and equity. That was just who she was.

To see her used by Secretary Noem and others to advance a cruel and heartless political agenda is not just deeply painful to us – it is an insult to her memory. Noem’s words are in direct conflict with who Emma was as a person. Emma built up community and stood with all members, including immigrants.

No parent should have to experience the loss of a child. But every time her name is brought into these conversations – conversations she would have wanted nothing to do with – we have to relive the pain of her death.

Secretary Noem, as a mother still grieving the loss of a child, I beg you to stop. This is not who she was. This is not helping us. Her memory should live in all the people she touched and the causes that she fought for. And I ask all of you to remember Emma as she was. And to live your life as she did: with courageous empathy and love for all.

Video of Noem’s remarks in Springfield:

I went to Springfield, Illinois, to join Angel families to call for the end for dangerous sanctuary city policies under J.B. Pritzker and bring attention to an at-large illegal alien murderer who has been evading justice for two years for the stabbing of Emma Shafer.

We stand… pic.twitter.com/0P1anlupVR

— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) May 7, 2025

The post Illegal Alien Boyfriend Arrested in Mexico for Brutal 2023 Stabbing Death of Illinois Immigrant Activist Emma Shafer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Welcome to The Gateway Pundit’s Week-in-Review with Elijah Schaffer, where he covers the top 5 stories throughout the last 24 hours.

 

ARTICLE 1: Jen Psaki Called Out for Blatant Hypocrisy After Mocking Prayer Following School Shootings — But Her Old Tweets Begging for ‘Prayers’ Have Come Back to Haunt Her

ARTICLE 2:   Former Counsel to House Democrats Says Party Has Become a ‘Cult That Worships Weird Progressive Idols’ (VIDEO)  

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ARTICLE 3: Democrat VA Gubernatorial Candidate Abigail Spanberger Wants to Turn Virginia Into a Sanctuary State for Illegal Aliens 

Please leave your opinions / comments on these stories below as Elijah reads every single one and appreciates your perspective.

The post Jen Psaki’s DISGUSTING Response: Mocks Prayer After Trans School Shooting! | Elijah Schaffer’s Top Stories (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Illegal alien MS-13 gang member and wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now trying to obtain a gag order against DHS Chief Kristi Noem and US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

A federal grand jury in Tennessee recently indicted Kilmar Abrego Garcia for “transporting undocumented migrants within the United States.”

He was charged with one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked Nashville-based US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, an Obama appointee, to impose a gag order on Bondi and Noem so he could have a ‘fair trial.’

Politico reported:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is asking a federal judge to order Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to stop publicly attacking him as his criminal trial on immigrant smuggling charges approaches.

The request submitted Thursday to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville is the third time defense attorneys have complained that public statements from government officials are threatening Abrego’s right to a fair trial. It follows a torrent of invective in recent days from President Donald Trump, Noem, Bondi and other close Trump allies, who have leveled salacious allegations against Abrego that he fervently denies.

“Further intervention from the Court is necessary to protect Mr. Abrego’s right to a fair trial and the integrity of these proceedings,” Abrego’s attorneys said. “The government’s ongoing barrage of prejudicial statements severely threaten — and perhaps have already irrevocably impaired — the ability to try this case at all — in any venue.”

In a separate federal court, US District Judge Paula Xinis set an evidentiary hearing for October 6 after Abrego Garcia filed a lawsuit to block his deportation to Uganda.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was ordered to be deported to the East African country of Uganda after a judge released him from a Tennessee prison last week.

The post JUST IN: Illegal Alien MS-13 Gang Member Kilmar Abrego Garcia Asks Obama Judge to Silence Bondi and Noem with Gag Order appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Greg Gutfeld returned to The Five today after a few days off and was spitting fire right out of the gate.

The very first issue that the panel discussed was the shooting in Minnesota this week by a young man who believed he was female, or at least wanted to live that way.

Gutfeld tore into Democrats and the media for encouraging these delusions and for hiding the shooter’s identity when it was politically inconvenient for them.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

GREG GUTFELD: This is why none of these a-holes can lecture anyone on compassion. The most compassionate people on this planet are trying to stop the trans delusion. The least compassionate are the people in the media, academia, and politicians who enable this hysteria of horror.

What is so glaring about the trans cult: apparently your identity is the only thing that matters—until you do something awful. Then it’s the least important variable. Then you look at everything else. You talk about guns. But suddenly, we can’t talk about that.

What was it? The other trans shooter where they actually hid her identity? In this manifesto that this creep wrote, he said he was tired of being trans, and that he had wished he had never brainwashed himself. What more do you need—straight from the monster’s mouth?

Politicians, activists, teachers—you built this. You could have listened to the warnings. We were talking about this on the show for years. You amplified the hysterical—hysterical, literally hysterical—phenomenon that was going no place good. You created a poisonous program that twisted young minds for destruction.

It’s a nihilistic place to be, when you deny biology and they have nowhere to go. So all of these media arguments—what you are seeing there among those people—it is to escape their own culpability and the reality they created.

Watch the whole thing below:

Wow. Watch Greg Gutfeld completely annihilate the anti-prayer, trans delusion death cult

“This is why none of these a-holes can lecture anyone on compassion. The most compassionate people on this planet are trying to stop this trans delusion. The least compassionate are the… pic.twitter.com/QCcfihsB42

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 28, 2025

Spot on as usual. Maybe it’s time to have one of those ‘national conversations’ the Democrats are always talking about.

The post Greg Gutfeld Goes Nuclear on Democrats and the Media for Pushing the ‘Trans Delusion’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.