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Former Treasury Secretary’s Portrait Covered Up After His Name Appeared In Epstein Files

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By Ralph Alswang, White House photographer - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-epstein-maxwell/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143417695

A federal watchdog group is going to court to learn more about why a former U.S. Treasury Secretary’s portrait was covered up after the release of a trove of disturbing email correspondence between him and deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury for records regarding the covering of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’ official portrait in the Main Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., reportedly after his name surfaced in records connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Treasury (No.1:26-cv-00446)).”

“Covering Larry Summers’ portrait won’t make the Epstein scandal disappear,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Covering the portrait raises obvious questions. Transparency—not cover-ups—is the proper response.”

“An exchange of emails between Summers and Epstein contained in a trove of Epstein records released by the House Oversight Committee, Epstein called himself Summers’ ‘wing man,’” Judicial Watch notes.

Judicial Watch reports it “filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Treasury Department failed to respond to a January 8, 2026, FOIA request for:”

All records, including communications, about the covering up of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers’ portrait in the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. Mr. Summers served as Treasury Secretary from July 2, 1999, to January 20, 2001.

“Judicial Watch submitted the FOIA request after a source inside Treasury informed a Judicial Watch lawyer about the portrait-covering incident,” the group notes.

Summers’ portrait was covered up after he announced his resignation from public life.

“In November 2025, soon after his name arose in connection with Epstein, Summers said, ‘I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused.… I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

State Department Sued For Labeling Trump ‘Disinformation Purveyor’

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(Miami - Flórida, 09/03/2020) Presidente da República Jair Bolsonaro durante encontro com o Senador Marco Rubio..Foto: Alan Santos/PR

The United States Department of State is being sued for documents detailing a Biden administration scheme that censored the political speech of Americans and labeled President Donald Trump a “disinformation purveyor.”

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. State Department for all records which allege President Trump or any current or former member of his cabinet are ‘purveyors of disinformation.’”

“The Biden censorship operation was compiling files on his political enemies from Trump world. The State Department should immediately disclose the records about this abuse, as FOIA requires,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch states in the complaint:

According to media reports on April 30, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the State Department labeled a member of President Trump’s cabinet as a purveyor of disinformation, compiling a dossier of social media posts from the unnamed cabinet member. See, e.g., “Rubio says State had dossier accusing Trump Cabinet member of disinformation,” The Hill, April 30, 2025 

Judicial Watch reports it sued the State Department after “it failed to respond to a May 1, 2025, FOIA request for records, including those of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), about social media posts of any current or former member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, to include Trump himself, alleged to constitute misinformation, disinformation, or malign influence. Judicial Watch also asked for any guidance or policy documents.”

Judicial Watch notes that during an April 30, 2025, Cabinet meeting, Rubio said, “We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans.”

Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee, said at a hearing in April about the center: “The GEC [Global Engagement Center] was initially authorized for the statutory purpose of countering foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts. Despite that mandate, for years the GEC instead deployed its shadowy network of grantees and sub-grantees to facilitate the censorship of American voices …”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. 

Obama DHS Secretary: FBI Overwhelmed by Potential Terrorists Crossing Border

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Jsg2020, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – You know things are bad when the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Team Obama is worried about terrorists crossing the border under Joe Biden. 

In the wake of the gruesome and deadly terror attacks against Israeli civilians by Hamas, Jeh Johnson told Fox News that he is concerned that Hamas or other Iranian-backed terrorist groups could use, or already have used, the wide-open border to infiltrate terror cells into the U.S.

As noted by 19fortyfive:

“There are a lot of people entering our southern border right now,” Johnson said. “Thousands and thousands. It’s a hemispheric move north bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. [emphasis added] And the challenge for [U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP], for our DHS, the FBI, is to try to keep up.”

Johnson continued, “Unfortunately, as you know, the system is broken, it’s horribly backlogged, and there’s a whole lot of people entering this country who we cannot identify.”

we know, Jeh. Please tell Biden!

Newsweek reported: “There has also been a rise in recent years in the number of people apprehended on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist, with border patrol agents apprehending 151 migrants along the southern border in the fiscal year 2023 who match the FBI’s screening system, according to the CBP.”

It added: “In fiscal year 2022, 98 people on the watchlist were apprehended after entering from Mexico.”

If Hamas can get past Israel’s highly fortified border with Gaza and deceive one of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence services to conduct what was mostly a massive surprise suicide raid to kill massive numbers of civilians, what do you think Iranian backed terrorists could do to us across our currently open border with Mexico?

One scenario involves them working hand in hand with powerful and deadly Mexican drug cartels that have free reign along the border and are behind much of the human and drug smuggling today.

As 19fortyfive reported:

Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins noted on X Friday that the Border Patrol had apprehended two Lebanese nationals in Eagle Pass, Texas, an area of high illegal migrant flow. Hizballah is based in Lebanon.

Hizballah has a documented relationship with the Mexican cartels that could easily be used to smuggle sleeper agents into the U.S. as it is used to smuggle drugs. Such agents likely would only be activated in the event of a war with Iran, because Hizballah is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC].

Recall that in 2011 the IRGC plotted with Los Zetas cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at Washington, D.C.’s upscale Café Milano in Georgetown.

Had that terror attack not been thwarted, it could have killed dozens of innocent civilians on U.S. soil. This is a perfect example of how Iran or its terror proxies could infiltrate the United States in coordination with Mexican cartels.

Today things could be far worse. They could then use Biden’s wide open border and the cartels’ growing networks inside our country to inflict maximum damage.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

France’s Riots are Like our BLM Riots – Not Really About the Police

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ANALYSIS – Another summer of rage erupts in Paris, this time sparked by the police shooting several days ago of a 17-year-old Muslim man of North African origin. Many liken the fiery French riots to our own Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020. 

And in many ways, they are similar.

They both used the police killing of a man of color to justify violence, arson, looting, and spreading chaos. Their initial stated agenda was to highlight police brutality and police racism, then just racism. 

Then a bunch of other stuff.

In the United States, a lot of the BLM rioting was targeted at President Donald Trump. In France, some of the rage is directed at Jews. 

Meanwhile, both violent rampages were quickly co-opted, if not initially instigated, by extremist ideologies and agendas. In the U.S., BLM was run by the far left and often became dominated by issues totally unrelated to the police or even racism. 

In Paris, the riots are as much about a growing unassimilated Arab/North African Muslim minority bringing radical Islam to France, as it is about the police or race.

It’s also about being anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and anti-French.

Just as BLM often disparaged all of white America as being racist while targeting cops, many French Muslims see the entire French system as evil.

And part of that ruling system includes French Jews.

The Times of Israel reported that “perpetrators did vandalize a monument for Holocaust victims in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the 17-year-old, identified in the French media only as Nahel M., was killed. The perpetrators spray-painted the words ‘Police scum’ on the monument.”

Antisemitic chants have also  been heard during the riots, “part of a well-documented sentiment among some Muslims who see Jews as part of an oppressive power structure.”

While Jews haven’t been attacked directly yet, these riots remind many French Jews of 2014, when Muslim rioters singled out Jewish-owned shops in a Paris suburb nicknamed “little Jerusalem” due to its large Jewish population.

That anti-Jewish violence, which also targeted several synagogues, was partly spurred by Muslim anger toward Jews amid the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Today we have Israel engaged in a major military operation in the West Bank against Palestinian terrorists using the Jenin refugee camp as a base for attacks against Israelis. This operation began Monday, and we have yet to see its impact on the riots in France.

If the conflict extends in the West Bank, expect things to heat up more in Paris.

But as The Times of Israel also noted, this violent uprising in Paris is far more widespread than ever before. And might be a turning point for how the French view their suicidally insane immigration policies.

“In 2014, I was afraid as a Jew. This time, I’m afraid as a Frenchman,” said Jonathan C., noting that he does not have a Middle Eastern appearance.

The Times added:

Police and firefighters are common targets of violence by rioters whom many believe are acting out of resentment of French society, where the anti-immigration far right is the second-largest political force.

Other incidents are seen by some as reflecting a religious dimension of the riots, which are occurring in heavily Muslim areas.

On Thursday, two unidentified individuals beat up and robbed a priest in Saint-Etienne near Lyon. Disagreements exist on whether the assault, the second attack of a priest in the region in three weeks, was part of the riots.

Hate attacks against Christians are multiplying in France, where in 2021 the interior ministry recorded 1,052 anti-Christian hate crimes, nearly double the assaults on Jews. It meant that Christians were, in absolute numbers at least, the religious group that was most targeted that year.

This worries many in France. They see the huge number of antisemitic and anti-Christian attacks, as well as attacks against police, as part of a resurgence of radical Islam in unassimilated migrant communities.

Even if these riots subside, the bigger danger remains. And that should be a concern for not just Paris, but other major European cities as well.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Deadly Mexican Drug Cartels Using Biden’s Open Border to Cause Chaos in US

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CBP Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Totally ignored or hidden by the establishment media is how powerful and deadly Mexican drug cartels are using Joe Biden’s deliberately open border to access the United States and cause chaos.

They do this in various ways. One of course is their bread and butter — drugs. 

The cartels have drastically ramped up their supply of drugs to the U.S., especially deadly fentanyl, since Biden took office. 

This is shown by the record number of fentanyl captures at or near the Mexican border.

But they are also clearly involved in human trafficking and in sending operatives to swell the ranks of their already large criminal networks inside our country.

These organized criminal networks distribute drugs, are involved in human sex trafficking, and many other serious crimes (potentially including terrorism), all within our borders. 

The Republican-led House must do all it can to investigate and thwart Biden’s damaging border policies beginning in January.

Beyond the difficult political task of ending Biden’s disastrous border and immigration policies while he remains in office, and the Democrats control the Senate, there are other measures that could be taken.

In an opinion piece for Fox News, Robert S. Wells, a retired U.S. Navy Captain, and former Special Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney explain one way to help our law enforcement and Homeland Security team fight back.

This involves revamping the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House to properly address the cartel threat by “connecting the dots.”

Wells notes that:

Every day the leadership in the Homeland Security and Justice Departments receive comprehensive reports from the Intelligence Community (IC), but those findings fail to translate into effective policy and strategy that strengthens our network against the cartels.

Those findings include the “known-known” Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports on drug cartel distribution of fentanyl distribution and the limitations of Customs and Border Protection (CBP)’s capability to scale to address the threat.

Unfortunately, under Biden, despite this deluge of valuable intel, these law enforcement agencies are not organized to use the information to succeed in an organized response.

Wells then recommends using a revised version of President GW Bush’s Executive Order 13228 to coordinate the fight against the cartels at the NSC.

That order, which created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was signed after the terror attacks on 9/11 2001 precisely to help our Intelligence Community (IC) “connect the dots” after a massive intelligence failure allowed al-Qaeda terrorists to fly jetliners into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon, and almost one into the Capitol.

The order also created the Homeland Security Council (HSC) within the Executive Office of the President.

Sadly, in the Biden NSC, Homeland Security has been downgraded, and coordinating the fight against the cartels now has to compete with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. 

Wells states that a revised Executive Order 13228 could be drafted and implemented by Biden in a day and a new newly established Homeland Security Council could be up and operational within a week:

Once established, the IC and agency professionals at Justice (DEA), Defense (SOUTHCOM), Homeland Security (CBP and USCG) can bring forward their recommendations against the cartels and their networks throughout the US.

This focus would help “connect the dots” through strategic communication that provides Colin Powell-style efficiency using a macro slide that illustrates the cartel networks operating in the US, the top 3 focal points to “cut off and kill” the cartel networks and executive authority to surge homeland security task forces to the top three areas.

Once rebooted, the office of the Homeland Security Adviser would be able to strategically communicate and lead efforts to “connect the dots” on the growing drug cartel threat.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Is Vivek Ramaswamy The GOP’s New Trump ‘Lite’?

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Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.

Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.

And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.

But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.

According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”

He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.

He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.

“President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.

And Trump loved it.

“This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”

The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.

As TIME reported:

Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.

But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”

Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.

It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”

Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.

But he is super smart and can learn quickly.

Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.

“Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”

AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”

However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: DeSantis Is In! Tell Us Your Thoughts!

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The showdown between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has America hooked.

Have you already made up your mind or are you waiting for a fight?

Watch Amanda below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Biden’s Pick for Chairman of Joint Chiefs Used Racist Hiring Practices

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David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Affirmative Action at top universities as unconstitutional, the same race-based policies used to achieve ‘diversity’ elsewhere are being scrutinized nationwide, including at the Pentagon. 

And now we learn that Joe Biden’s pick to replace Army General Mark Milley as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, himself had racist hiring practices. 

That could make him ineligible to be the nation’s top military officer.

Air Force General Charles Q. (CQ) Brown, a man of color, is accused of making “discriminatory comments and potential unlawful impact on military personnel,” according to the American Accountability Foundation (AFF).

The AFF was set up in early 2021 to expose the leftist backgrounds of Biden’s top nominees. 

Multiple sources have reported that Brown made statements while chief of staff for the Air Force and during his previous tour as Pacific Air Forces commander suggesting that he hired personnel and promoted them based on race, rather than merit, to force diversity in the Air Force.

“Race-based hiring has no place in the military. Our men and women in uniform deserve to be led on missions by the most qualified and skilled officers and leaders our nation has, who will give them the best chance of success and getting home safely,” said the AFF in a statement.

Considering the accusations against Brown, the AAF filed a complaint with the Air Force Inspector General and requested an official investigation into Brown’s allegedly discriminatory comments and practices.

As the Daily Caller (DC) reported:

While serving as the Air Force’s chief of staff and before that as Pacific Air Forces commander, Brown made statements suggesting he selects individuals for certain roles and promotions based on their race to build purposefully diverse organizations, multiple sources show. Brown could be violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) argues, making him ineligible to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The DC added:

If Brown has acted upon his “publicly stated beliefs on what should be official hiring policy of the U.S. Air Force [race-based hiring], it would present a significant likelihood of violating the civil and constitutional rights of military personnel” as well as Department of Defense (DOD) codes of conduct, AAF said.

And records appear to show that Brown did exactly that.  Brown’s diversity policies appear to have prioritized bringing on non-white officers and recruits. The Air Force Times reported that 2022, Brown changed the Air Force’s demographic goals for officers to 67% of them being white, down from 80% in 2014. 

But things have only gotten worse under Brown. According to a February 2023 Air Force newsletter, the Air Force also recently pledged to track officer promotions based on “race, ethnicity and gender.”

So now the discrimination Brown has implemented isn’t only against white men, its against straight white men as well.

I agree with AFF’s concerns, if these allegations are confirmed they should make ‘CQ Brown ineligible to serve as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the United States Senate should not confirm him to that lofty role.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Anti-Woke ‘Radical Libertarian’ Wins Argentine Election, Trump Plans Visit

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – In another extremely positive political development overseas, a ‘far-right’ populist, better called an anti-woke radical libertarian, has won the presidency in Argentina.

The leftist-hating, free market advocate, Javier Milei, hopes to shake up South America’s highly statist second-largest economy and its extreme socialist politics.

While Argentina and the U.S. are very different political animals, and former President Trump and Milei don’t share similar views on a lot of things, Trump congratulated Milei on his landslide victory, saying he would “Make Argentina Great Again!”

According to a statement by Milei’s press office after the two spoke on Thursday, Trump will also visit Buenos Aires to meet with the Argentine president-elect.

One thing they do have in common is their hatred of the left and love of incendiary language (read to the end).

A hundred years ago Argentina was one of the six wealthiest countries in the world, but thanks to the socialism of Juan and Evita Perón, and their Peronist party, the beautiful country has dropped to a dismal to 66th place, below Mexico and just above Russia.

Milei, who leads the country’s La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) party, won the presidential run-off with some 56% of the vote, well ahead of left-leaning Peronist Economy Minister Sergio Massa’s 44%. Milei will take office Dec. 10.

The self-described anarcho-capitalist is pledging economic shock therapy, by among other things, slashing bloated government spending, shuttering the central bank, and ditching the thoroughly devalued peso for the U.S. dollar.

These potentially painful reforms resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise. Still, as Fortune noted, Milei’s “party controls only a handful of seats in congress, and policies like dollarization would be an incredibly complex undertaking even with broad political support.”

Meanwhile, many “investors think Milei is the best shot at salvaging the economy after years of market pain.”

Fortune added:

While Milei gained attention for quirks that were atypical for a potential head of state — his unusual hairdo, love of his cloned dogs and a penchant for campaigning with a chainsaw — he won fans among investors for his promise to usher in a business-friendly era for Argentina. Economic growth is elusive, the peso has lost more than 90% of its value in four years, and around 40% of the population lives in poverty.

John Fund writes in National Review:

Milei, a free-market economist, is an ally of both the U.S. and Israel and a sworn adversary of China and Latin American leftists. His plan to dollarize the Argentine economy will blunt China’s effort to undermine the U.S. currency. As analyst Juan P. Villasmil puts it: “Argentina’s economy is the second most powerful in South America, so having it led by an openly pro-US leader in a continent filled with socialists isn’t bad news.”

Milei describes himself as an Austrian economist, but there is also some Chicago School influence. He named two of his dogs after Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, and a third after Murray Rothbard.

Elon Musk and other U.S. business leaders are already looking forward to an open and more free Argentine economy. Milei has a strong team of advisers from free market think tanks and has forged an alliance with establishment conservative parties to help him govern.

And Milei is a firebrand and fighter much like Trump. Expect him to take a wrecking ball to the socialists. The UK’s Express quoted Milei as saying:

“You can’t give s**t leftards an inch. All collectivists, all kinds of collectivists. […] They are s**t!

“If you think differently from them they will kill you. This is the point. You can’t give s**t leftists an inch, if you give them an inch they will use it to destroy you.

“You can’t negotiate with leftards. You don’t negotiate with trash because they will end you!

Milei added: “And since they can’t beat us with real arguments, they just use the repressive apparatus of the state with loads of taxpayer money to destroy us and yet they’re still losing!”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

FBI Finally Raids Communist China’s Illegal Police Outpost in NYC

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ANALYSIS – The fight against China’s growing global network of illegal police outposts has finally heated up here in the United States with the FBI raiding the large Chinese station in New York City (NYC).

This is the mission the FBI should be focused on, rather than raiding pro-life activists or colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans.

I’ve written about these extraterritorial Chinese police stations several times, highlighting the ones in NYC, as well as those in Canada and Europe.

Beijing says these outposts aren’t doing any police work, only helping Chinese citizens abroad, but Chinese state media reports that they in fact “collect intelligence” and solve crimes far outside their jurisdiction.

But they do far more than that. 

They are accused of conducting illegal surveillance on legal U.S. residents and citizens of Chinese extraction and intimidating, threatening, and coercing them.

In some cases, they have reportedly even kidnapped people outside of China.

According to the New York Times (NYT), the FBI raided the suspected Chinese police outpost, hidden in New York City’s Chinatown last fall, seizing materials from one of the secretive operations for the first time.

The Chinatown outpost was on the third floor of a six-story office building on a busy street. It was raided by FBI counterintelligence agents working on a criminal investigation with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Of course, as the NYT reports, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the outposts, claiming they are staffed by volunteers who help Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses.

Despite the official Chinese denials, the NYT reports, “Western officials see the outposts as part of Beijing’s larger drive to keep tabs on Chinese nationals abroad, including dissidents. The most notorious such effort is known as Operation Fox Hunt, in which Chinese officials hunt down fugitives abroad and pressure them to return home.”

In October, prosecutors in Brooklyn — the same office that searched the New York office — charged seven Chinese nationals with harassing a U.S. resident and his son, pressuring the man to return to China to face criminal charges.

As reported by the NYT, “It’s outrageous that China thinks it can come to our shores, conduct illegal operations and bend people here in the United States to their will,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2020.

At least 102 such outposts have been documented in 53 countries in recent months by the human rights group Safeguard Defenders. Wray said in November that he’s “very concerned” about the outposts, which he called “police stations.”

“It’s a long-arm power to show their own citizens inside China that their government is so strong,” said Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yen-ting. “We have the power to reach globally, and even if you go out, you’re still under our control.”

These outposts are ostensibly set up by local Chinese municipalities or regions. At least four Chinese localities — Fuzhou, Qingtian, Nantong and Wenzhou — have reportedly set up dozens of foreign police outposts in Japan, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other nations.

These don’t include the ones in Canada and the U.S.

Let’s hope the FBI keeps up the pressure on illegal Chinese police activity in the U.S., and the State Department gets involved in controlling any Chinese entities and personnel it has allowed to enter and operate on U.S. soil.

Communist Chinese influence and subversion in the U.S. is the greatest domestic threat we face, not Americans exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.