Wednesday, January 14, 2026
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There's a new development in the yearslong international mystery over Havana Syndrome: The U.S. has obtained and has been testing a device that officials believe could be linked to the debilitating condition.
Sources said the device was quietly obtained by the Department of Homeland Security in late 2024, almost a decade after symptoms of what became known as Havana Syndrome were first reported by U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba. The Pentagon has since been testing the portable, backpack-sized device, which emits pulsed, radio-frequency energy and contains components of Russian origin.
The sources said Homeland Security investigators believe it may be capable of reproducing the effects described by victims of Havana Syndrome.
Latest shooting in Minneapolis
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At 6:50 PM CT, federal law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop in Minneapolis of an illegal alien from Venezuela who was released into the country by Joe Biden in 2022.
In an attempt to evade arrest, the subject fled the scene in his vehicle and crashed into a parked car. The subject then fled on foot.
“People live in homes, not corporations.”
That didn’t come from a leftist on the campaign trail but from President Donald Trump.
Between defending the killing of Renee Nicole Good and disparaging the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, the president announced Wednesday(opens in new tab) on Truth Social that he was “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes.” He called on Congress to codify the policy without details about how it would be implemented or whom it would affect.
“[The] American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” the president wrote.
Exclusive–Trump-Kennedy Center Cuts
Ties With In-Debt Washington Opera, Opens
Stage to Global Talent replies
Ties With In-Debt Washington Opera, Opens
Stage to Global Talent replies
The Trump-Kennedy Center has ended its exclusive partnership with the Washington National Opera, citing unsustainable financial losses and the desire to open the stage to opera productions from across the United States and the world.
According to an exclusively obtained letter provided by the Trump-Kennedy Center to WNO leadership dated January 13, 2026, and sent via Federal Express, the Trump-Kennedy Center (TKC) made clear that the exclusive relationship with the WNO had become unsustainable. The Center emphasized a commitment to commonsense financial planning, stating, “The Trump Kennedy Center (Center) business plan calls for programs to be net neutral either by corporate contributions, individual donors or sponsorships if the program
Rachel Maddow likes to play armchair political scientist. Asked by Jimmy Kimmel if she thinks the “peaceful protests” she highlights on her show do any good, Maddow enthusiastically replies, “Yes!” and explains:
In political science terms, there’s what’s called the 3.5% rule which is that if you look at authoritarian regimes of various kinds all over the world over the last like century, once you have 3.5% of a population protesting nonviolently against a dictator or an authoritarian, that is essentially an unstoppable force that they can’t oppose. And that precludes them from consolidating dictatorial power….It’s not that much larger a number than what we are already seeing in
The Quest for PeakStupid
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The overlooked value of social media is how it provides people with a global platform for broadcasting rank stupidity. This week’s first contestant in the race to the bottom is Ken Martin, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, who plowed new ground by comparing events in Minnesota to those in -- wait for it -- Iran. That’s right; thousands of Iranians being slaughtered because they want to be free of the mullahs is exactly like one American being killed for trying to run down an ICE agent.
"From Tehran to my birthplace of Minneapolis,” wrote Martin, “people are rising up against systems that wield violence without accountability. In Iran, brave protestors
A group of Republicans is launching a bid to impeach Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
State Representative Mike Wiener provided Newsweek with articles of impeachment he had drafted to remove Walz from office, while on X, other Republicans in the state House said they wanted to introduce articles of impeachment against the Democrat amid mounting concerns about fraud in the state.
"Democrat control of our state has led to 9 billion dollars of fraud that we currently know about," Wiener told Newsweek. "Governor Walz said 'the buck stops with him.' Since he refused to resign the next step is impeachment.
President Donald Trump is weighing imminent military action against Iran that could come “in the next 24 hours,” according to a Reuters report citing European officials, as the Pentagon begins pulling personnel from key U.S. bases across the Middle East and Tehran warns it would retaliate if Washington strikes.
The Reuters report, published Wednesday, said two European officials assessed U.S. military intervention now appeared likely, with one saying it could come within the next 24 hours, while an Israeli official similarly said it appeared Trump had made a decision to intervene — though the scope and timing remained unclear.
The determination came as the United States began withdrawing some personnel from bases
The FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter Wednesday morning as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of unlawfully hoarding federal secrets. Agents searched journalist Hannah Natanson's home in Alexandria, VA (snip.) Natanson covers the federal workforce for the newspaper and described herself as "the federal government whisperer" (snip.) The target of the investigation is Aurelio Perez-Lugones (snip) who has a top-secret security clearance (snip) [and] is accused of taking home classified intelligence reports. (snip) The defendant has held a security clearance for over 25 years (snip.)
Contrary to the media’s blaring headlines about “the health care crisis,” there’s another question the press should answer but won’t. To wit: Why is it only a “crisis” when a Covid-era entitlement expires on Republicans’ watch?
While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., eggs on the press by pontificating about a “health care crisis” caused by the recent expiration of enhanced Obamacare subsidies, he and his colleagues selectively and cynically ignore the recent past. The same Senate Democrats who now call the lapse of enhanced Obamacare subsidies a “crisis” let a far larger Covid-era program expire on their own party’s watch with barely a peep of objection.
A leading proponent of face masks as a means of countering the spread of respiratory infections appears to have changed her mind. Professor Trish Greenhalgh, University of Oxford – described as the “high priestess” of the face mask movement, who even appeared on her X feed wearing two face masks during the COVID-19 years – has endorsed a letter to the WHO in which it is claimed, as reported in the Guardian, “There is ‘no rational justification remaining for prioritising or using’ the surgical masks that are ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics globally, given their ‘inadequate protection against airborne pathogens’.”
"If you’re allowing Blackstone to come in and outbid a family of four from buying their home, now they get trapped in a one-bedroom apartment on the wrong side of town. Their entire life trajectory has been upended because a private equity institution came in and outbid them.”
– James Fishback, GOP candidate for governor of Florida, speaking to Pirate WiresWhat Fishback is describing is indeed, as he puts it, “the number one problem in America: affordability.” He goes on to explain what is an inevitable premise of nationalism: “If you can’t buy a home, you can’t get married. If you can’t get married, you can’t have kids. If you can’t have kids, what’s the point?” Criticizing a childless life and extolling the virtues and fulfillment of a life that includes having children is the point Fishback is referring to, but he would probably agree it is also the point, the reason, and the required element for preserving a nation.
– James Fishback, GOP candidate for governor of Florida, speaking to Pirate WiresWhat Fishback is describing is indeed, as he puts it, “the number one problem in America: affordability.” He goes on to explain what is an inevitable premise of nationalism: “If you can’t buy a home, you can’t get married. If you can’t get married, you can’t have kids. If you can’t have kids, what’s the point?” Criticizing a childless life and extolling the virtues and fulfillment of a life that includes having children is the point Fishback is referring to, but he would probably agree it is also the point, the reason, and the required element for preserving a nation.
Democrats are being told not to say ‘abolish ICE’ because it will hurt their chances in the midterms. Of course, they want to say it and they believe it, they even want to do it, but it’s a losing political message and they know it.
It is basically ‘defund the police’ all over again, and even though they meant that one too, they know that it damaged them politically.
Saying ‘abolish ICE’ simply reinforces the idea that Democrats care more about illegal aliens than they do about American citizens, a concept that they have done nothing to dispel in recent months.
On Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions held a hearing on the dangers posed by chemical abortion drugs. During the proceedings, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) posed a simple, direct question to Dr. Nisha Verma, a board-certified OB-GYN, who was there as a Democrat witness.
“Dr. Verma, I wasn't sure I understood your answer to Senator Moody a moment ago. Do you think that men can get pregnant?” Hawley asked.
That should have been the most straightforward question in the world to answer. It required no policy analysis, no nuanced debate, no medical jargon. It only needed honesty.
But, instead, we got evasion.
Verma immediately signaled distress, explaining, “I hesitated
The family of Renee Good, the woman shot by an ICE agent during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, has hired the same law firm that represented George Floyd’s relatives.
Chicago-based Romanucci & Blandin announced Wednesday it will represent the parents, siblings and widow of Renee Good, The Hill reported. The firm secured a $27 million settlement for the Floyd family in 2021 after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd during an arrest.
Good, 37, died on January 7 after ICE agent Jonathan Ross reportedly shot her in south Minneapolis.
A website dedicated to leaking personal information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents was reportedly subject to a cyber attack that its founder believes may have originated in Russia.
Dominick Skinner, a Netherlands-based immigration activist, told The Daily Beast that his website, ICE List, came under cyberattack Tuesday evening after the publication reported Skinner planned to release personal information, obtained through a whistleblower, about thousands of employees.
The attack, known as a Direct Denial of Service, is when a perpetrator seeks to disrupt access to a network or service by flooding it with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload the system.
JPMorgan Chase Bank is suing former Chicago Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot for letting her $11K credit card bill go unpaid for 17 months.
The media has learned that Lightfoot, who became the first Democrat Chicago Mayor not reelected to city hall in about 40 years, was served with a subpoena at her $900,000 Chicago home in October, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Chase ultimately decided in March that her $11,000 bill would be a charge-off, but her last payment of $5,000 on the debt was made on August 7, 2024, according to the bank’s records. The bank reported that Lightfoot has had the card since 2005.
Lightfoot seems to be struggling to pay her
On Wednesday, after a closed-door meeting with American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen held a press conference. His remarks sounded cautiously optimistic.
The narrative presented by the American president, as we've been reporting, is that Greenland should become an American possession. Needless to say, Denmark and Greenland aren't keen on the idea. While it seems unlikely that the United States would attempt to take Greenland by force, the big island does in fact occupy a vital strategic position in the North Atlantic; it's something worth trying to make a deal over.
Remember 2020, the halcyon days of mask mandates? I was working in New Jersey when the entire COVID panic started, and one would have thought the very air had turned radioactive. Many people accepted it as a silly necessity, but there are always those who take things to a ridiculous level. We all remember the sights of people driving alone, in their personal cars, wearing masks, or walking alone, outside, on a sunny day, again wearing a mask. That's OK. I've always thought that stupid people should be conspicuous.
Sanity may be returning, here and there. Now, at Oxford University, former double-mask advocate Professor Trish Greenhalgh has
From the moment the Renee Good case broke, it had all the ingredients of a political wildfire. On one side, you had left-wing activists, media outlets, and grifters working overtime to turn the death of radical lesbian Renee Good into the next “Summer of Love.” On the other hand, you had reasonable people who watched the footage and tried to figure out what really happened… because when more video angles were shared, the narrative everyone was being sold began to unravel.m (snip)Thanks to a new report from CBS News, the media’s favorite victim script has been dealt a serious death blow.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointees of President Donald Trump, appeared to be buying into “transgender” ideology during oral arguments for a case regarding men playing in women’s sports.
Gorsuch’s major contribution to the Tuesday oral arguments thus far was relatively early on, when he suggested that people identifying as “transgender” should be considered a “discrete” group “given the history of de jure discrimination against transgender individuals in this country.” The justice essentially asked whether those who claim to be “transgender” should be a legally protected class.
When Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro blew off subpoenas issued by Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 committee, refusing to answer questions before a kangaroo court, they received four-month prison sentences, which they both served in their entirety. And, both men suffered serious financial ruin; Navarro revealed that by the end of his trial, he was expecting to spend three-quarters-of-a-million dollars for his defense.
Now, according to a report from Politico, Bill and Hillary Clinton have followed suit, officially refusing to testify before Congress about their respective relationships with Jeffrey Epstein:
DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro Gives Full
Context to DOJ Investigation of Fed Chairman
Jerome Powell replies
Context to DOJ Investigation of Fed Chairman
Jerome Powell replies
U.S. Attorney for the District of Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro, goes public explaining the backstory of the DOJ reviewing the Federal Reserve Board and Chairman Jerome Powell.
As noted by USAO Pirro, Chairman Powell refused to respond to questions for two months despite three repeated requests. The DOJ was then forced to issue a subpoena to get a response. Again, Powell never responded; instead, he went to the media to claim he was being politically targeted. WATCH: (Video)
Washington Dems demand mask ban for law
enforcement as attacks on ICE agents surge nationwide replies
enforcement as attacks on ICE agents surge nationwide replies
A proposal by Washington state Democrats to ban most law enforcement officers from wearing face-concealing masks during public operations is drawing sharp criticism from federal officials, who warn the measure could endanger officers at a time when violence and threats against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are rising dramatically nationwide.
If enacted, Senate Bill 5855 would prohibit local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, including ICE agents, from wearing masks that obscure their identities during public interactions, with limited exceptions for undercover assignments and certain tactical operations. The bill received its first hearing on Tuesday before the Washington Senate Law & Justice Committee.