“No Kings” — spray-painted on a federal building alongside threats to murder the people enforcing our immigration laws. The irony of people demanding no kings while acting like a lawless mob seems to be lost on the participants. ICE’s response was exactly right: threaten our agents and their families, and you will meet the full weight of federal law — full stop.
Sheridan Gorman was 18 years old, a college freshman, and she’s dead — allegedly shot by Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan national who had no business being in this country, let alone walking the streets of Chicago. According to reports, this man is missing part of his skull, can’t read or write, and had gang ties — which apparently wasn’t enough to keep him out or locked up. Every sanctuary city politician who made this possible should have to look Sheridan’s mother in the eye and explain the policy choice that cost her daughter’s life.
The House looked at the Senate’s “compromise” — which conveniently forgot to fund ICE and CBP — and said no thank you. Speaker Johnson held the line, the Freedom Caucus held the line, and three Democrats with functioning survival instincts crossed over to pass a clean 60-day patch that actually funds the entire Department of Homeland Security. Eric Swalwell, meanwhile, went on television to call ICE a “domestic terror unit,” which tells you everything you need to know about why Democrats shut this department down in the first place and nothing you need to know about anything else Swalwell has ever said.
Iran Officially Lowers Minimum Age for Military Roles to 12
The Iranian regime — already under military pressure from Operation Epic Fury — has decided the solution is child soldiers. Twelve-year-olds are now officially eligible for “military support roles,” which is the kind of euphemism that sounds almost civilized until you remember what it means in practice. This is the same government Trump says is “begging for a deal,” and I’d take that deal — but let’s be clear-eyed about who we’re dealing with: a regime that straps kids to the front lines isn’t negotiating in good faith, it’s buying time.
Sheridan Gorman is dead — killed at 18, just trying to go to college in Chicago — and the Loyola Phoenix’s big lesson from the whole ordeal is that they shouldn’t have called her alleged killer an illegal immigrant. They did, it was correct, and they apologized for it anyway. Mayor Brandon Johnson is doubling down on sanctuary policies in the same week, because in Chicago the rules are: protect the living murderer, lecture the dead victim’s family about “senseless tragedy,” and make sure the student journalists know that accuracy is a fireable offense.
Margot Cleveland laid it out before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday: unconstitutional appointment, subpoenas that violated the Speech or Debate Clause, phone records vacuumed up on private citizens like Kash Patel — the whole rotten bouquet. The good news is that the Constitution survived Jack Smith. The bad news is that nobody seems to be in any particular hurry to make sure this never happens again. Victor Davis Hanson says a reckoning awaits — I’ll believe it when I see a perp walk, not a podcast.
Mullin cleared 54-45, with Fetterman and Heinrich crossing the aisle — which tells you everything about how radioactive the open-borders caucus has become in an election year. Rand Paul voted no, presumably because Mullin once offered to fight a union boss on the Senate floor, and Paul has principles about something or other. A new DHS chief is good news; now someone needs to actually reopen the agency so those nine-hour TSA lines at Atlanta stop being a thing.
Tehran’s response to Trump’s ultimatum was, essentially, “nice Gulf neighbors you have there.” Iran is now threatening to strike the energy and water systems of Saudi Arabia and the UAE if Trump follows through on hitting Iranian infrastructure — which is a bold move for a regime that just launched ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia and missed. The mullahs are playing a very dangerous game of chicken with a president who has demonstrated he is not running a bluff operation. Tick tock.
Bellingcat published an investigation this month titled “Border Patrol: Agents of Chaos.” It’s a long, well-produced piece — 85 hours of footage analyzed, agents identified by name, former DHS officials offering grave commentary about “Orwellian” tactics and violations of de-escalation policy. The production values are excellent. The framing is almost entirely backwards.
I want to walk through why — not because Bellingcat is uniquely dishonest, but because this piece is a perfect specimen of a genre: the investigative report that treats enforcement of the law as the problem, and organized interference with law enforcement as a sympathetic backdrop. Once you see the structure, you can’t unsee it.
Trump told Iran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz or watch its power plants get obliterated — and he’s given them 48 hours to decide. Over 20 nations have already lined up to help enforce the opening, which is the kind of coalition-building that tends to happen when the guy making the threat is actually credible. The mullahs spent eight years learning that the previous American president would send them a strongly worded letter; they’re getting a remedial education now.