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Every month, millions of Americans are overpaying because of sky-high credit card interest — money that could stay in their pockets instead.
Photo courtesy of the United States Naval Institute.
President Trump confirmed that U.S. forces struck a facility on Venezuela’s coast used to load boats with drugs, describing it as a dock area destroyed around December 27, 2025. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said there was a major explosion at the “implementation area” but declined to specify whether the military or CIA conducted the operation, saying only “it doesn’t matter” and “I know exactly who it was but I don’t want to say.”
No official Pentagon, White House, or CIA confirmation has been provided, and no Venezuelan sources or regional authorities have reported such a facility being destroyed.
This marks the first known land-based strike since the administration’s anti-narcotics campaign began in September 2025.
Since then, the U.S. has conducted at least 29 maritime strikes destroying 30 vessels and killing at least 105 people labeled “narcoterrorists,” deployed 15,000 troops and multiple warships to the Caribbean including the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, positioned CV-22 Osprey aircraft and C-17 cargo planes from Fort Campbell and Fort Stewart in the Caribbean theater, seized at least two Venezuelan oil tankers, and implemented a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
Trump signed a CIA finding in October authorizing covert action against Venezuela, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an execute order in August directing Special Operations to sink vessels and kill crews. Trump designated the Maduro regime a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Legal experts note that military strikes on Venezuelan sovereign territory without authorization violate international law and could trigger Venezuela’s right to self-defense under the UN Charter.
This marks a clear escalation from maritime interdiction to direct strikes on sovereign territory. However, from a practical standpoint, no escalation is possible because Venezuela is powerless to do more than complain.
Caracas has condemned the seizures and strikes as acts of piracy. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez accused Trump of attempting to steal Venezuelan wealth, while Maduro claims the United States is fabricating justifications for intervention.
Venezuela has also passed legislation imposing harsh penalties on supporters of the U.S. blockade.
Despite repeated threats to mobilize four million militia members and warnings that hosting U.S. forces would amount to declaring war, Venezuela has launched zero military counter-strikes against U.S. vessels, despite more than 30 boat attacks, zero response to the mainland dock facility strike, zero response to the seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers.
Venezuela’s military capabilities explain why it cannot respond. The country’s F-16 fleet has only 3–6 operational aircraft out of 18, with a 30–40 percent readiness rate after U.S. sanctions since the 1990s cut off parts and upgrades, forcing widespread cannibalization.
Its Su-30MK2 fleet has roughly 13 flyable aircraft out of 24, plagued by chronic maintenance problems and scarce Russian spare parts.
Any sortie against the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group would amount to a suicide mission, given U.S. F-35s, AWACS, and Aegis destroyers providing overwhelming detection and interception advantages. Venezuela has no AWACS, no aerial refueling capability, and no modern support aircraft.
The navy fields only one functional frigate and a single Type-209 submarine. Corvettes purchased from Spain were delivered without weapons and were later fitted with Chilean and Iranian anti-ship missiles, but they lack viable air-defense systems. Ground forces fare no better.
T-72 tanks and BMP-3 vehicles suffer severe degradation due to fuel shortages, limited training, and years of cannibalization.
Morale among rank-and-file troops is low, with Reuters reporting persistent shortages of food and basic supplies.
PBS has also noted that the oft-cited 4.5 million militia figure has remained unchanged for years and is almost certainly inflated.
Military analysts assess Venezuela’s only realistic doctrine as asymmetric resistance built around guerrilla tactics, urban disruption, and prolonged insurgency.
The regime claims to maintain roughly 280 small units trained in sabotage, neighborhood surveillance, and territorial defense, designed to absorb an initial strike, disperse, and operate independently.
This strategy is only relevant in the event of a U.S. ground invasion. Maritime interdiction and air strikes bypass Venezuela’s guerrilla preparations entirely.
Maduro’s survival depends on avoiding any action that would trigger a full U.S. invasion, and any direct attack on U.S. forces would provide clear legal justification for regime-change operations.
Maduro uses military rhetoric to rally nationalist sentiment and justify internal crackdowns, including arrests of opposition figures and new laws imposing up to 20-year prison terms for supporting the blockade.
Russia and China provide diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council but will not defend Venezuela militarily.
China continues to buy Venezuelan oil at a discount, with roughly 7 percent of Beijing’s oil imports coming from Venezuela in October 2025, providing revenue Maduro needs to survive.
Military analysts agree U.S. forces would almost certainly establish air and sea control within days.
A full invasion would require more than 100,000 troops and would face destroyed infrastructure and a protracted insurgency.
The political costs of urban warfare, the risk of damaging oil infrastructure Trump wants to secure, opposition from Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, and the limited objective of pressuring Maduro rather than occupying the country explain why the U.S. has not and will not launch a full invasion.
Newly resurfaced surveillance footage and investigative reporting confirm that the now-exploding Somali daycare fraud scandal in Minnesota follows a well-documented playbook that state officials were warned about as early as 2013, and repeatedly thereafter.
Yet year after year, the fraud was allowed to metastasize, draining hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from programs meant to help poor children, while far-left Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and radical Rep. Ilhan Omar looked the other way.
The scandal exploded into the national spotlight this week after a viral video by YouTuber Nick Shirley went mega-viral, accusing Somali-owned daycare centers of blatant fraud.
Shirley knocked on doors, demanding answers, and what he uncovered has prompted the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to “surge” into Minnesota for a massive investigation.
Let’s rewind to 2013, when a team of Ramsey County forensic auditors uncovered the scam’s early roots. A KSTP 5 Eyewitness News report from October 2025 reveals a whistleblower from Ramsey County who, in 2013, uncovered four daycare centers exploiting CCAP, with dozens more suspicious cases totaling over $100 million in fraud.
The whistleblower alerted the Department of Human Services (DHS) and lawmakers, but nothing happened for years.
Reporter: Did you raise your concerns to the Department of Human Services?
Whistleblower: Yes. I spoke with the Office of Inspector General numerous times.
Reporter: I talked with this whistleblower, whose identity we’re protecting because they still work as an auditor. They were hired as a Ramsey County forensic auditor to investigate fraud in the CCAP program.
Whistleblower: We were the ones who came up with the $100 million a year in CCAP fraud in 2013.
Reporter: The team of investigators uncovered four daycare centers exploiting the CCAP program. All of the owners were charged with fraud in the CCAP program, and the whistleblower says there were dozens more.
Whistleblower: How much fraud is there? We identified 60-some-odd suspicious cases, and other cases as well.
Reporter: But the whistleblower says nothing ever happened with those 60 other cases.
Whistleblower: Personally, I want to know why. I think this is a much bigger issue than just a handful of bad actors. This runs deep, and it runs all the way to the top of some departments and agencies.
Reporter: So if you and your investigation found 60 cases in the CCAP program that were questionable, they could total over $100 million?
Whistleblower: Yes, easily.
Reporter: And when all of this was given to state lawmakers—you alerted them to this problem 12 years ago—what is your response and your reaction to what’s going on now?
Whistleblower: I have been in shock that nothing has happened except for the last couple of years. There are so many agencies that should have oversight of this.
Reporter: Despite charges in those older cases, prosecutors have not announced charges in the newer investigations.
WATCH:
FOX 9’s investigative reporting in 2018 also exposed the fraud, estimating that it cost taxpayers up to $100 million a year, with cash-stuffed suitcases reportedly flying out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) almost weekly.
In 2018, Fox 9 aired a bombshell investigation detailing what the reporter described as rampant fraud in Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP).
According to Fox 9’s reporting, based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources, large sums of taxpayer money were being siphoned out of daycare centers and physically carried overseas in suitcases filled with cash.
The trail led straight through Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, where sources told Fox 9 that carry-on bags stuffed with cash, sometimes $1 million at a time, had become a routine sight.
By 2016, investigators documented $84 million leaving MSP as undeclared carry-on cash. By the following year, that figure ballooned to more than $100 million annually, much of it headed to Dubai, the Middle East, and East Africa.
Former FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigator Glen Kerns told Fox 9 that some of the cash streams were routed through hawalas – informal money-transfer networks- linked to regions controlled by al Shabaab, an internationally recognized terrorist organization.
The news outlet reported:
“To better understand the connection between daycare fraud and the surge in carry-on cash, you have to look at the history of this crime.
Five years ago the Fox 9 Investigators were first to report that daycare fraud was on the rise in Minnesota, exposing how some businesses were gaming the system to steal millions in government subsidies meant to help low-income families with their childcare expenses.
“It’s a great way to make some money,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said.
In order for the scheme to work, the daycare centers need to sign up low income families that qualify for child care assistance funding.
Surveillance videos from a case prosecuted by Hennepin County show parents checking their kids into a center, only to leave with them a few minutes later. Sometimes, no children would show up.
Either way, the center would bill the state for a full day of childcare.”
The surveillance video is timestamped March 31, 2015.
One of the most shocking cases involved Fozia Ali, who was sworn in as a member of the Hopkins Park Board while under active investigation for wire fraud and theft of public money.
As Ali pledged to “support the Constitution of the United States,” state and federal agents had already raided her Minneapolis daycare for allegedly billing more than $1 million in bogus childcare services.
The FBI confirmed that some of the stolen money went overseas. Ali herself took a two-month trip to Dubai and Kenya, staying in luxury hotels costing up to $800 per night, all while using a phone app to bill Minnesota for childcare services she wasn’t providing.
According to the indictment and documents filed in state court:
ALI operated the Salama Child Care Center (Salama) in Minneapolis. Between at least December 2013 and May 2015, ALI defrauded the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to obtain payments from the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) for child care services that were not actually provided.
According to the indictment, ALI submitted claims for CCAP payments that overstated the number of children who actually attended and received day care services from Salama. The claims asserted that more than 100 children attended and received child care at Salama on a given day. On more than one occasion, the claims falsely inflated the number of children that had attended Salama on a given day by more than 400 percent, including on days when Salama was closed.
Ali later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to federal prison.
Perhaps most damning are the internal warnings.
Scott Stillman, a veteran digital forensics manager at Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, sent urgent emails in 2017 warning superiors that:
“We are working on and overwhelmed by a significant amount of fraud cases involving organized crime, defrauding hundreds of millions of dollars annually in taxpayer monies.”
Stillman explicitly warned that stolen funds were being sent overseas to organizations connected to terrorism.
His emails were delayed, redacted, buried, and never meaningfully acted upon.
Stillman ultimately resigned.
WATCH:
In September 2018, the Human Services Reform Finance and Policy Committee received an update on ongoing fraud investigations being conducted by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Office of Inspector General.
The committee also heard testimony from Anoka County officials regarding their “success” in handling fraud cases.
Chad Aaron Ollinger, a 41-year-old star from the Discovery Channel series Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch, has been charged with open murder after allegedly killing his cellmate in a Las Vegas jail — just weeks before he was set to walk free.
The incident took place on Friday at the Clark County Detention Center in Nevada.
Corrections officers conducting routine checks discovered an unidentified male inmate lying motionless in his cell, suffering from apparent blunt force injuries sustained during a physical altercation. Despite immediate attempts to resuscitate him, the victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
The name of the deceased had not been publicly released at time of publication.
Ollinger, who shared the cell with the victim, was immediately taken into custody by authorities.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) homicide detectives investigated and determined that a fight had occurred between the two men inside the cell.
Ollinger was subsequently re-booked on a charge of open murder, held without bail, and is scheduled for arraignment on Tuesday.
The alleged murderer rose to fame alongside his father, Duane Ollinger, on the Discovery Channel show centered on treasure hunting and paranormal investigations on his supposedly cursed ranch in eastern Utah.
Ollinger’s mounting legal troubles began in November 2024 when he was arrested in Potter County, Texas, for evading police after fleeing on a motorcycle and then on foot. He was indicted on those charges in January 2025, only to be rearrested the following month in Gray County, Texas, for driving with an invalid license.
In July, Ollinger’s family reported him missing in New Mexico before he was eventually located in Albuquerque.
In October, Ollinger was booked into the Clark County Detention Center in Nevada on a contempt-of-court charge.
On December 18, he was sentenced to a short term with an original release date scheduled for January 12.
What was supposed to be the end of a relatively minor jail stay has now turned into a capital murder case that could keep Ollinger behind bars for life.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is facing intense backlash after a resurfaced clip from earlier this month went viral.
In the viral clip, Walz deflects blame from the Somali community in the state’s ongoing multi-billion-dollar fraud scandals by stating that the “majority of crime is committed by white men.”
The clip, which resurfaced amid Nick Shirley’s viral investigation into Somali day care fraud in Minnesota, shows Walz responding to a question during a December 12 press conference about whether the foreign community bears responsibility for not preventing or reporting the schemes.
“The majority of crime is committed by White Men,” Walz said. “It’s crime in general. We need to be educating the population…Medicaid fraud will stretch across ALL racial demographics and ethnic groups. I think you can’t blame the Somali community.”
“It’s not law abiding citizens. If that were the case, there’s a lot of white men who should be holding a lot of white men accountable for the crimes they have committed,” he said.
“Each community’s got this in their own midst, but to blame them and say that they should have been responsible for stopping it — I think that’s a pretty hard reach,” Walz added.
Walz claimed that Somalis just need to be educated about “why they shouldn’t commit crimes.”
“I think we continue to educate folks about why they shouldn’t commit crimes. You would hope that it’s being taught both at home and at schools and in our society,” the governor said.
“But no, I think this idea that the Somali community is to blame for this because they didn’t do more — I think that’s how we got into this.”
WATCH:
TIM WALZ: “The majority of crime is committed by White Men. It’s crime in general. We need to be educating the population…Medicaid fraud will stretch across ALL racial demographics and ethnic groups. I think you can’t blame the Somali community.”
Walz also accused President Donald Trump of inflaming the issue, claiming he made it “white hot” and “very dangerous,” despite acknowledging that the scandals are not new and have been under investigation for years.
Walz convened the press conference to announce new anti-fraud measures, including the appointment of retired judge and former Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans as the state’s Director of Fraud Prevention.
This came in response to escalating revelations of fraud in programs like Feeding Our Future, which allegedly saw over $250 million stolen through fake child nutrition claims, and to estimates suggesting that up to half of the $18 billion in federal funds across 14 state programs may have been defrauded.
The vast majority of the individuals indicted in these schemes are from Minnesota’s Somali community.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in December 2025, ruling that the Trump administration lacked a valid legal removal order and had detained him “without lawful authority.” The Salvadoran national, who was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison in March despite a 2019 court order protecting him, returned to the United States in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, which he has denied.
Following his release, a federal judge imposed a strict gag order on the Department of Homeland Security and other Trump administration officials, prohibiting them from making public statements about Abrego Garcia’s case that could prejudice his right to a fair trial. The gag order came after senior officials including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made numerous extrajudicial statements calling Abrego Garcia an MS-13 gang member, a “monster,” and a trafficker—claims he has denied.
Since his release, Abrego Garcia has begun posting religious music videos on TikTok, including lip-sync to Danny Berrios’ “Himno de Victoria” and other Christian Spanish-language songs, with some videos garnering nearly half a million views. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded with frustration on social media, stating: “So we, at @HSgov, are under a gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks,” claiming the situation demonstrates that “American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement.”
The social media backlash has been critical, with critics echoing the DHS official’s frustration that Abrego Garcia is posting content while the federal agency remains restricted from public commentary, while leftist supporters have expressed relief at his freedom and show solidarity on his posts. A federal judge this week canceled Abrego Garcia’s trial and scheduled a hearing to determine whether prosecutors are pursuing the human smuggling charges vindictively, following allegations that the investigation began only after a federal court ruled the Trump administration lacked authority to deport him.
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Chicago’s far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson has endorsed “Abolish ICE” as a name for one of the city’s snow plows in its annual naming contest.
Public voting will select six winning names, each to be painted on a plow in one of Chicago’s six snow districts.
The Democrat mayor, known for his extremely progressive policies and vocal opposition to federal immigration authorities, made the endorsement during a discussion on MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday.
While Sharpton said the name was “funny,” Johnson was not joking. He believes the name to be a serious critique of ICE, which he described as a “privatized force to enact terror” that causes “a great deal of harm against people.”
“Not just terror, but a great deal of harm against people,” Johnson said of the agents. “And so over the course of several years in this city, we have stood firm on our values. And it just happened to coincide with the time in which we name all of our fleet utilities. And of course, you know, we have to take a stronger look at how this administration has used ICE and how it has caused tremendous harm. So that’s why that particular name of this truck being named ‘Abolish ICE,’ has my full and complete endorsement.”
The fourth annual “You Name a Snowplow” contest, organized by the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, invites residents to submit creative names for the city’s fleet of snow plows.
Launched earlier this month, the contest accepts entries online until January 10 or until 20,000 submissions are received.
Previous winners have included fun, Chicago-themed entries like “Mrs. O’Leary’s Plow,” “Sears Plower,” “Ernie Snowbanks,” and “Snower Wacker.”
You already know what time it is, Chicago. Submit your snowplow names to https://t.co/4jU8gIyF3W by January 10, 2026 to participate in the fourth annual ‘You Name a Snowplow’ contest. Residents will pick the top six, and those names will represent one snowplow in each of the… pic.twitter.com/VzG4Zr0DJx
One X user criticized the politicization, stating, “The snow plow names are supposed to be fun and light-hearted. Not political. Don’t ruin a fun thing.”
The original poster retorted that “Abolish ICE” was “fun, light-hearted, and nonpolitical,” emphasizing the literal meaning of abolishing ICE with a plow. Johnson’s press office chimed in with a simple “True,” according to a report from CBS News.
This endorsement is just the latest in Johnson’s pattern of aggressive anti-ICE rhetoric and actions, which prioritizes illegal aliens over American citizens and law enforcement.
Since taking office, Johnson has repeatedly clashed with federal authorities, framing ICE operations as threats to Chicago’s communities.
Newly released FBI documents expose the shocking extent of the bureau’s deliberate cover-up of Hillary Clinton’s foreign bribery schemes and pay-to-play operations through the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 election.
FBI Documents Reveal Deliberate Suppression of Clinton Foundation Investigation
FBI New York Assistant Director Diego Rodriguez prepared detailed questions for Hillary Clinton regarding foreign bribery allegations through the Clinton Foundation, according to documents released to the Senate Judiciary Committee on December 15. The investigation, codenamed “Cracked Foundation,” uncovered evidence of pay-to-play schemes involving foreign governments. FBI agents had intercepted conversations between Clinton and Indian hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal discussing foundation donations and campaign debt, yet Washington headquarters deliberately ignored these serious allegations during Clinton’s July 2016 interview.
HILLARY CLINTON’S email scandal and the WEINER laptop. The FEDS covered it up.
Hillary Clinton could NOT be proven guilty by the FBI from her infamous email scandal without taking OBAMA down with her and that’s exactly ONE reason why they covered it up. But there is more… So… pic.twitter.com/tddXrCV3Dw
When Clinton finally appeared before FBI agents two months later for questioning about her private email server in the separate “Midyear Exam” investigation, agents asked nothing about the foreign bribery evidence or allegations that the Clinton Foundation operated as a personal slush fund. This deliberate omission represents a stunning betrayal of justice and constitutional accountability, demonstrating how the deep state protected Clinton while she pursued the presidency.
Saudi Arabia’s Massive Illegal Campaign Contributions
ZeroHedge reported in 2016 that Saudi Arabia funded approximately 20% of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to claims made by the Saudi Crown Prince to Jordan’s official Petra News Agency. This revelation exposed breathtaking hypocrisy as Clinton simultaneously criticized Saudi support for extremist organizations while secretly accepting their illegal foreign contributions. Federal law explicitly prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to American political campaigns, making these payments a serious felony that undermines election integrity and national sovereignty.
Update: DOJ discloses ‘shady donation deal’ between Hillary Clinton and FELON millionaire from India!
‘That’s the only way to buy them, get into the system’ — Sant Singh Chatwal!
FBI believes Chatwal used the Clinton Foundation to give massive foreign donations to her 2016… pic.twitter.com/AdAfzvG7Wg
The Saudi funding scheme represented just one component of a broader pattern of foreign influence peddling that compromised American interests. Clinton’s willingness to accept money from nations with documented ties to terrorism while publicly condemning their activities demonstrates the corrupt double standards that have eroded public trust in government institutions and constitutional principles.
WikiLeaks Exposes Clinton Campaign’s Brazen Acceptance of Foreign Money
WikiLeaks emails revealed that Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta responded “Take the money!!” when advisers raised concerns about accepting cash from registered foreign agents. The leaked communications exposed a $12 million commitment from the King of Morocco that Hillary Clinton personally helped facilitate, along with evidence of systematic efforts to “scare our people into giving bigger sums” through coordinated fundraising schemes involving foreign nationals.
These emails documented how Clinton’s team plotted to circumvent campaign finance laws while presenting her as a reformer who would limit big money in politics. The hypocrisy extends beyond mere campaign rhetoric into active deception of American voters about the foreign influences shaping her policy positions and political priorities.
The junta ruling Burma (Myanmar) has allowed its first post-coup election but banned the participation of pro-democracy and opposition parties and barred much of the population from taking part.
The Burma (Myanmar) election leaves observers asking whether it can truly be called a legitimate election when opposition parties and much of the population are prohibited from participating.
Burma’s military junta held the first round of its 2025 election on December 28, marking the first vote since overthrowing the country’s democratically elected government in 2021. Participation was sharply limited, with only about one-third of eligible voters casting ballots. Voting took place only in areas under military control, effectively disenfranchising large segments of the population living in conflict zones that comprise roughly 70 percent of the country’s territory.
As voting began, the Union Election Commission announced that nine additional townships had been added to the list where voting could not take place due to ongoing armed conflict. The newly excluded areas included three townships in Chin State, two in Sagaing Division, and four in Rakhine State, bringing the total number of townships entirely excluded from elections to 65, up from 56.
The UEC also confirmed that Phases 1 and 2 could not be held in 51 village tracts in Karenni State, and that Phase 3 elections scheduled for January 25 would not take place in 10 village tracts in Pekhon Township. In total, 134 townships are now affected either fully or partially, setting a record for the highest number of areas where elections could not be conducted in Burma’s history.
The election is being held in three phases across 265 of 330 townships, with the second round on January 11 and third round on January 25. Final results are expected to be announced by the end of January 2026.
One Yangon polling station recorded turnout of just under 37 percent, well below participation levels in the 2020 election won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. In Karenni State and other areas controlled by revolutionary forces, residents rejected the process, saying the election is neither free nor fair and excludes large portions of the population displaced by war.
Local residents questioned how voting could occur in places like Hpruso Township, where most civilians have fled, calling any announced results fraudulent. While Hpruso did not vote in Phase 1 on December 28, the Union Election Commission has scheduled both Hpruso and Demoso townships in Kayah State to participate in Phase 2 on January 11, 2026, despite ongoing displacement and insecurity.
Six parties, led by the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, are contesting nationwide, while around 40 parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, remain banned. The pro-military USDP is widely expected to emerge as the largest party, with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing expected to assume the presidency.
Major political parties have been dissolved, opposition leaders jailed or exiled, and as much as half the country is excluded from voting due to the ongoing civil war. More than 3.6 million people have been displaced and tens of thousands killed since the coup. The war has devastated the economy and deepened a humanitarian crisis worsened by a major earthquake and aid cuts.
The vote drew strong international criticism. U.N. human rights rapporteur Tom Andrews condemned the process as “theater of the absurd performed at gunpoint,” citing continued airstrikes on civilians, mass arrests of political leaders, and the criminalization of dissent. Western governments rejected the election’s legitimacy.
Leading up to the election, the junta charged more than 200 people under a new law criminalizing opposition to the polls, with penalties that can include the death sentence. The election law, passed in July, imposes sentences ranging from three years in prison to life imprisonment or death for criticizing the vote and has been used to charge at least 229 people, including artists, activists, and civilians accused of online dissent.
By November, nearly 100 people had been detained under the election protection law, a figure that more than doubled by late December, including individuals charged for social media posts criticizing the election or for merely “liking” someone else’s post.
In Yangon’s Hlaingthaya Township, three youths were sentenced to between 42 and 49 years in prison for hanging anti-election posters. Film director Mike Tee, actor Kyaw Win Htut, and comedian Ohn Daing were each sentenced to seven years in prison for undermining public trust after criticizing a pro-election propaganda film.
Significant violence occurred in the lead-up to the election. The self-declared “Yangon Army” bombed local administration offices in Hlegu and North Okkalapa on November 18-19, injuring several election staff and vowing to continue attacking election organizers.
Amnesty International documented a deadly manned paraglider bombing at a festival in central Myanmar where people had gathered to demonstrate against the election, killing civilians including children after motorized paragliders dropped mortars into the crowd. On December 10, the military bombed a hospital held by the Arakan Army in Rakhine State’s Mrauk-U township, killing more than 30 people.
Election day itself was relatively calm in areas where voting occurred, though opposition organizations and armed resistance groups had vowed to disrupt the electoral process. Armed guards were stationed outside polling stations and military trucks patrolled the roads, with security visibly stiffened and stations cordoned off overnight. Reports of explosions, rocket attacks, air strikes, and civilian casualties accompanied voting day across multiple regions. Myanmar now ranks third in the world for drone strikes and casualties behind only Ukraine and Russia, with air and drone attacks by the military increasing roughly 30 percent this year, recording 2,602 air attacks that killed 1,971 people.
The junta has paired legal repression with intensified military violence, including rising air strikes in resistance controlled areas where it is attempting to assert control to hold voting. Amnesty documented attacks on civilians, hospitals, and public gatherings. At least 56 of Burma’s 330 townships are under martial law.
Major pro-democracy and ethnic armed groups rejected the election months before it occurred. The National Unity Government issued a statement declaring that the military has neither the authority nor legitimacy to organize elections, noting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw abolished the 2008 Constitution on March 30, 2021, and the results of the 2020 general election remain valid. On January 29, 2023, the NUG declared that individuals cooperating with the election would be deemed “accomplices of high treason.”
The Karen National Union issued a statement on August 26, 2025, calling the upcoming election a “sham” designed to select individuals and parties serving the interests of the Myanmar Tatmadaw. KNU spokesperson Padoh Saw Taw Nee stated the so-called election was nothing more than a vote to serve the military and its allied parties, urging the Karen public, armed organizations, and political parties to resist peacefully through non-violent means.
The KNU’s Nyaunglebin District and Brigade 3 issued a warning on September 11 that anyone supporting the junta’s election would be considered as giving the regime an “official license to kill,” and stated they would monitor and take action under Kawthoolei law if necessary. Twenty-five Karen civil society groups led by the KNU released a statement condemning the regime’s elections and requesting the international community not recognize the results.
The Karenni Nationalities Defense Force chairman Khun Bedu stated the regime’s talk of elections and ceasefires was unacceptable, saying that behind this, the generals aim to maintain power and reestablish centralized authority, and warned that if we are united militarily and politically, the regime will not be able to hold elections or fight back. The KNDF rejected the junta’s election and stated they will not recognize the results.
Major ethnic armed organizations including the Chin National Front, Karenni National Progressive Party, Kachin Independence Organisation, and Ta’ang National Liberation Army criticized the planned election. The Arakan Army, which controls 90 percent of Rakhine State, also rejected the junta’s election and stated they will not recognize the results.
Amnesty International urged the international community to reject the election’s legitimacy and focus on accountability for ongoing abuses, including suspending jet fuel shipments that enable air strikes and pursuing international justice.
The organization called on the International Criminal Court to advance arrest warrants against junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and other officials, warning that the election is an attempt to entrench military rule through the ballot box after nearly five years of war.
The elections in 2015, and particularly in 2020, when people were able to vote for the pro-democracy party, were among the most hopeful moments in the long and painful story of Burma’s struggle for freedom, which has been going for nearly 80 years. Unfortunately, this year’s election offered no such hope. Freedom and a federal democratic system remain far off, perhaps even further away once the junta claims victory in its manufactured election.
Harrison Pitt, a British writer, policy fellow at Restore Britain, and political commentator, recently sat down with academic Dr. Nima Parvini—better known online as “Academic Agent”—for a wide-ranging conversation about the globalist-left’s ideological pivot away from ham-fisted wokism and the Right’s inability to capitalize on it.
Parvini has built a reputation as a sharp reader of power: how systems reproduce themselves, how ideology functions as social control, and why populist energy so often gets absorbed by the machine it claims to fight. Pitt, as host, plays the role of impatient diagnostician—less interested in partisan theatre than in the mechanics of regime survival.
The interview’s central claim is this: the era of maximum-volume “woke” politics is receding, not because the left-globalist elites reformed themselves and their modes of thinking, but because it became operationally costly. It should be seen as nothing more than a tactical retreat by a managerial class that is retooling.
Parvini begins by arguing that the “putting the woke away” shift was visible well before most commentators noticed. He points to his own essay, Putting the Woke Away (later included in his book Political Theory), written in 2022–23 as an early attempt to map the elite’s changing incentives.
For Parvini, Britain’s former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2007) is the key tell—not because Blair is uniquely powerful, but because Blair acts as a reliable ventriloquist for ruling-class adaptation. The media calls Blair’s pronouncements “rare interventions,” Parvini jokes, even though Blair appears constantly, issuing instructions by op-ed.
In Parvini’s telling, Blair had been guiding Labour’s repositioning long before Starmer entered Downing Street. His instructions were simple: tone down the anti-White, anti-male excesses, purge the internal, uncouth radicals, and present as competent administrators—the “adults in the room.”
The practical trigger, he argues, was not moral revulsion but institutional performance—especially recruitment. Pitt notes that both U.S. and British military recruitment fell sharply, and Parvini treats that as a civilizational warning—young men, often White, were checking out of the system.
Parvini cites a report by an American officer attributing the slump to the obvious—alienation, contempt for DEI-heavy messaging, and a belief that institutions no longer serve ordinary citizens. When states can’t recruit those who historically have acted as its primary defenders, the ideological software is malfunctioning.
He then widens the lens to corporate power, pointing to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s annual letter urging a retreat from overt politicization and a return to “business and basics.” For Parvini, that’s how the regime speaks when it wants to change the subject without admitting error.
The result, he says, is a real—if partial—toning down of the most aggressive forms of 2020-era wokery. He reminds viewers how quickly careers were destroyed for failing to signal loyalty to fashionable causes, and how relentlessly entertainment and advertising were turned into ideological enforcement mechanisms.
Today, he argues, the woke fever has cooled some. The language of accusation remains—“racist,” “bigot,” “transphobe,” and so on—but the cultural bombardment is less overt and less intense, partly because it stopped working and partly because cracks in critical institutions began showing.
Parvini even uses military advertising as a cultural barometer. Where recruitment ads once sold the armed forces as a multicultural, feminized, gap-year travel club, he now sees a return to masculine cues and less forced diversity—an implicit admission that a nation cannot meme its way into readiness.
He adds a darker inference: NATO’s posture suggests preparation for major conflict, and elites understand they cannot fight a hard world with a soft, self-loathing moral aesthetic. Whatever slop story they’re feeding the public, the regime and its institutions are behaving as if pressure is coming.
From there Pitt shifts to electoral messaging and asks whether recent left-wing wins, such as Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory, signal a “return of wokery.” Parvini’s answer is that what’s rising is not woke maximalism but a softened, left-populist mask designed to make the same moral architecture tolerable again.
He points to the Mamdani campaign in New York as a case study: strip away the slander and you find an image of the candidate as a “regular guy,” obsessed with everyday costs and speaking in plain terms. The Left is now taking a page straight out of Trump’s 2016 playbook.
Even the British Greens, Parvini says, are adapting—downplaying the climate alarmist liturgy in favor of broad anti-elite sentiment. Billionaires, ever-increasing rents, out-of-reach housing prices, inflation, inheritance, and the idea that the system is rigged against working people. The ideological commitments remain; the sales pitch is simply less alienating.
Pitt presses on the deeper question: has the ideology actually retreated, or has it just gone quiet? Parvini argues the latter—wokeness is being soft-pedaled, not renounced, and it still functions as a set of litmus tests.
He then offers examples. Public figures still perform identity pieties on demand, and minoritarian “proof of virtue” questions still appear in mainstream debates. The regime may have lowered the volume, but it has, without a doubt, kept the compliance rituals.
Parvini then describes wokeness at its peak not as egalitarian but as hierarchical—what he calls the “progressive stack.” By assigning moral status by demographic category and placing the “pale, male, and stale” at the bottom, the system predictably generated a backlash—one it is now scrambling to contain.
Crucially, Parvini argues, this was never straightforward liberalism. It drew inspiration from post-modern and post-Marxist critiques: Western “ways of knowing” treated as suspect, even to the point of activism around “indigenous mathematics” and other epistemic revolts.
Yet Parvini insists the deepest driver is emotional rather than scholarly: an animating resentment and a desire for a “curative onslaught” against what the West, especially straight white men, built. Intersectionality, in this view, is less a theory than an engine for moral inversion.
Pitt then draws a historical analogy: Trotsky versus Lenin—radical fervor versus pragmatic consolidation. Parvini agrees, arguing that the new left-populism is merely a tactical retreat, tamping down the movement’s more visibly “psychotic” impulses so the broader project isn’t endangered.
At this point the conversation turns from the left to the right—and to the regime’s capacity to self-correct. Pitt frames Blair as a kind of oligarchic, ideological founder figure, with Starmer as the dull bureaucratic successor—uncreative, unpopular, yet stubbornly protected.
Pitt then argues Starmer’s government is doing “dirty work” that future rulers may benefit from: unpopular decrees like digital ID, and other enforcement measures that shift the baseline regardless of who wins later. Parvini’s response is strategic: if the Right wins, it must not settle for vibes and shallow propaganda.
He warns against “Pyrrhic victories”—elections that change the cast but preserve the script. Blair mattered, Parvini says, because he embedded ideology structurally: quangos, regulators, consolidated super-bills, and managerial machinery that has long outlived him.
Britain’s problem, he argues, is that a parliamentary majority grants enormous power—the “Divine Right of Parliament”—yet supposed right-wing challengers often refuse to wield it. They cling to classical-liberal squeamishness, Parvini asserts, while their opponents happily use the state as a moral weapon.
Parvini’s bleakest claim lands near the end of the conversation. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, in his view, looks like a rebranded Tory product and may eventually merge with the Conservative machine. The system, he suggests, needs performative politics—red versus blue—so the public stays invested in the spectacle rather than questioning the permanent, managerial class itself.
Finally, Parvini introduces his “boomer truth regime” metaphor—John Lennon and Winston Churchill both flashing the V sign—where the reigning moral good is unlimited self-expression, and any attempt to impose civilizational limits is instantly branded fascism. Under that regime, apology never works, and the right cannot win by begging to be called “nice.”
The interview ends on a civilizational challenge: if globalist elites are adapting, the largely rightist opposition must adapt faster—and with more seriousness. In Parvini’s framing, the question is no longer whether the woke era is “over,” but whether its opponents can stop mistaking a quieted revolution for a defeated one.
Update: DOJ discloses ‘shady donation deal’ between Hillary Clinton and FELON millionaire from India! 
