President Donald Trump is pausing the processing of all Afghan migrants after it was discovered that an Afghan national shot two National Guardsmen near the White House in D.C. on Wednesday.
"Processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols," the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced.
The person arrested for the shooting, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, entered the United States in 2021 under the Biden-era initiative Operation Allies Welcome, according to Just the News.
In speaking to condemn the shooting, Trump blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for his lax immigration policies.
"We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country," he said.
The New York Times reported that Lakanwal drove across the country from his home north of Seattle, where he lives with his wife and five children, and had a plan to attack the Guard troops.
A .357 revolver was used in the shooting. Lakanwal allegedly shot one guardsman, then shot again after he fell, before shooting the second guardsman.
The soldiers, Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom, ages 20 and 24, are in critical condition after surgery.
Apparently, Lakanwal worked with the CIA in Afghanistan in 2021 and was part of the withdrawal of Afghan allies when the U.S. withdrew from that area.
Jeanine Pirro said that the U.S. would seek the death penalty for Lakanwal if the guard troops didn't survive.
Pirro also said Lakanwal is being charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed, as well as possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
She also defended the presence of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., saying that their presence helped form “the line that separates a civilized society from a barbaric one.”
A judge has ruled to block the continued deployment, saying it was probably illegal, but Trump is fighting to keep the troops there.
The nonpartisan group #AfghanEvac said that Lakanwal's case “appears to be a tragic outlier — not a pattern."
The Ohio House has passed a bill called the "Charlie Kirk Act" to allow schools to teach about the positive contributions of Christianity to the U.S. in history classes.
The bill passed along party lines, with all Republicans voting for it and all Democrats voting against it.
It was intended to remind teachers that teaching about different religions including Christianity from a historical and cultural perspective is not a violation of the First Amendment.
“It’s essential that we highlight the positive influence religion has had throughout our history – uniting communities, enriching our shared values, and safeguarding our First Amendment rights as Americans to speak and worship freely,” bill co-sponsor Michael Dovilla said after its passage.
Not all religious leaders and clergy support the bill, with some thinking church and state should be completely separated.
Some also feared that the bill would encourage teachers to ignore potential negative effects of religion, such as the way Christianity was used in the South to uphold slavery for a time.
In addition, the Ohio Council for the Social Studies said the bill was redundant and narrow, but Dovilla disagreed.
“It’s essential that we highlight the positive influence religion has had throughout our history,” he said. “Uniting communities, enriching our shared values, and safeguarding our First Amendment rights as Americans to speak and worship freely.”
The bill does not prevent teachers from covering topics that show the negatives of religion, it only encourages the positive to also be included.
“This bill does not impose a belief system, it simply allows teachers and professors to include historical truths that have too often been neglected,” Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation, said.
Students should learn “how faith shaped the resolve of the pilgrims, guided our Founders’ convictions, inspired movements that provided us the liberties we enjoy today, and informed the moral fabric that has bound our republic together since its birth,” he added.
It's clear that the left wants only the negative parts of religion, if any, to be highlighted in schools.
They think we should worship at the altar of the federal government, which they think provides everything that people need.
In truth, taking religion out of schools and the public square has done nothing but make it worse. Hopefully, this bill will help Ohioans realize the positive impact of Christianity and how important faith was to building America.
President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security has ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for citizens of Burma as part of its overall immigration strategy to restrict both legal and illegal immigration.
Nearly 10,000 Burmese nationals will be impacted by the move, which set a date of January 26, 2026 for TPS to end.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement that the administration believes the conditions in Burma are improved enough for the nationals to return home.
She said,
The situation in Burma has improved enough that it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home, so we are terminating the Temporary Protected Status. Burma has made notable progress in governance and stability, including the end of its state of emergency, plans for free and fair elections, successful ceasefire agreements, and improved local governance contributing to enhanced public service delivery and national reconciliation.
“This decision restores TPS to its original status as temporary,” Noem added.
It has been a complaint of the Trump administration that previous administrations (Obama and Biden) treated TPS as a more permanent status and were reluctant to ever end it.
Former President Joe Biden alone allowed more than a million migrants to come into the U.S. under TPS, as of early 2025.
TPS, which started in 1990 under then-President Bill Clinton, was intended to prevent deportation of migrants who are designated as experiencing famine, war, or natural disasters in their countries of origin.
Trump has ended the program for migrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela, but legal challenges have blocked the action for some countries, at least for now.
Just about any country in the world could claim that conditions there are worse than in the U.S., but that's not the measuring stick TPS was made to use.
It's not a bad thing to be compassionate and take on some refugees when a country is clearly having a bad moment, but taking on millions of refugees and then vaguely making it permanent is not a thing we should be doing as a country.
Trump has set an ambitious goal to deport a million illegal immigrants each year he is in office, and the people whose TPS has been revoked could be some of those if they refuse to leave the country.
The DHS said in September that more than 2 million illegal immigrants have already been deported or left on their own, with the majority of them having self-deported to avoid detention and deportation at the hands of the government.
"The era of open borders is over," a statement from DHS said. And it seems that the open arms that have greeted so many refugees are also a thing of the past.
In the aftermath of a Democrat statement encouraging military troops to disobey orders from President Donald Trump, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) admitted to ABC "This Week" host Martha Raddatz that she wasn't aware of any instance when President Donald Trump issued an illegal order to the military.
“Let’s talk right now. Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders?” Raddatz asked.
“To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal — but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes, and everything related to Venezuela,” Slotkin answered.
Slotkin justified the Democrat statement about disobeying Trump, which she participated in, by saying that they did it because of the “sheer number” of troops and young officers asking them what they “should do.”
“Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” the lawmakers say in the video, which was released on Tuesday.
“Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly says in the video.
“You can refuse illegal orders,” Slotkin says in the video.
President Donald Trump's response on Truth Social initially said the statement was "sedition," which is "punishable by death," but Trump later revised his statement after saying he did not want to "execute" the lawmakers.
“THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OKAY,” Trump wrote in a post on Saturday. “IT WASN’T, AND NEVER WILL BE! IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME. THERE CAN BE NO OTHER INTERPRETATION OF WHAT THEY SAID!”
It is important to note that, technically, the Democrats did not tell military members to disobey Trump.
That being said, they certainly seemed to imply from their comments that Trump was a "threat to the Constitution" and was issuing or would likely issue illegal orders to the military at some point, which is unfair and wrong of them to do.
Their words obviously created a controversy, based on Slotkin's appearance on "This Week."
Even if they were sincere about wanting to respond to the inquiries they said they were getting, they ended up inflaming the situation rather than calming it down, which is never a good thing (but probably exactly what they wanted to do, if truth be told).
President Donald Trump has terminated Temporary Protected Status for Somali migrants in Minnesota after news broke of a billion-dollar fraud scandal.
It turns out that the massive Somali community in Minnesota was engaged in a giant money laundering scheme that defrauded government programs of billions of dollars.
Of course, it doesn't stop there, as counter-terrorism officials discovered that some of the money had been sent back to Somalia to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, "Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing."
Concerns about Minnesota's massive Somali community that is effectively taking over areas of Minnesota and forming enclaves have been rising for some time. Now those concerns have been validated with the discovery of fraud and terrorist funding.
A report from the City Journal explained that, "Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots."
Remember, this is the same Tim Walz that Democrats thought would make a good Vice President of the United States last year. Minnesota is entirely run by Democrats, so the blame for this horrific scandal falls firmly on their shoulders.
The Journal continued, "Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."
For those who aren't aware, Al-Shabaab is responsible for the death of thousands of Somali's over the past two decades. It speaks volumes that Somalians coming to the U.S., seemingly to escape terrorism, are sending money back to this organization.
Ending TPS status for these migrants is the only sensible course of action for the White House. Any Somali immigrant sending money back home to fund terrorism there has no place in the United States.
The extent of these fraud schemes also remains to be fully unearthed, and some suspect it could go all the way to the top with Democrat officials being involved.
The City Journal's report noted that under the state's Democrat leadership, Somali scammers took advantage of the state's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, which launched in 2021 with expenses expected to ring in at $2.6 million. The program paid out $21 million in its first year. In the following years, the program ballooned to $42 million, then $74 million, and then $104 million.
U.S. attorney Joe Thompson said during a press conference that, "What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor, and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”
This kind of fraud and corruption doesn't happen without the participation of government officials in Tim Walz's administration. Every single one of those officials must be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Former first lady Michelle Obama ignited a firestorm by making bigoted statements about Americans, and even prominent leftists aren't happy with her flippant comments.
Obama was conducting a book tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week when she claimed that America isn't ready for a female president and cited that as her reason for not running for president in 2028.
Speaking to actress Tracee Ellis Ross, Obama said, "As we saw in the past election, sadly, we ain’t ready. That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time."
However, it only got worse as Obama became downright condescending when she said, "We got a lot of growing up to do and there’s still, sadly, a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman, and we saw it."
This remark predictably made many Americans angry, and even leftists like 'Real Time' host Bill Maher and ex-DNC chair Donna Brazile blasted Obama for her divisive and inaccurate comments.
The Obama couple has made a massive career out of pushing grievance politics and dividing Americans, but many people are sick of it. So much for hope and change.
On Friday's showing of “Real Time," Maher tore into Obama saying, "She was in the news this week, Michelle Obama. She has a book out. A coffee table book. Her statement, I was rather shocked by it. To me, this is logical fallacy 101. Just because we weren’t ready or didn’t like the candidates, Hillary and Kamala, doesn’t mean we are not ready for a woman."
He continued by saying, "I think it’s a bad attitude. We said we weren’t ready for a black president and someone, I can’t remember who maybe she remembers, said maybe it just has to be the right one."
Brazile chimed in by pointing out that Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote in 2016 despite losing in the electoral college. Obama's assertion that Americans aren't ready for a woman president is absurd considering two women very nearly became president.
The real issue is that those two candidates, Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris, were some of the worst candidates in American history.
Furthermore, both of those candidates attempted to leverage their status as women to guilt Americans into voting for them. The reality is that the right woman candidate would win an election, but not just any woman.
The harsh reality is that Michelle Obama is likely not running for president in 2028 due to the fact that she simply isn't that great of a candidate. The stock of the Obama name has cratered in recent years as the luster has worn off with increased scrutiny of her husband's record.
Michelle Obama has come up as a possible candidate for the Democrat Party because of their lack of good candidates. Democrats were forced to run a geriatric Joe Biden twice in a row, and the results were far from ideal.
The less said about former Vice President Kamala Harris, the better. At this stage, a presidential run could do more damage to Obama's image for little reward. Of course, that's assuming the Obamas don't continue to make inflammatory statements that anger large swaths of Americans.
An Obama-appointed judge has ruled that President Donald Trump can't revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of Syrian nationals currently inside the United States.
United States District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled in favor of seven Syrian nationals that sued to prevent the end of TPS that was set for Friday, even though they and the other 6,000 who are here have no status at all in the country.
The decision to end TPS for Syrians came from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in September.
“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” DHS’s Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement at the time.
"Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home," she added. "Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. TPS is meant to be temporary."
For Democrats, TPS has turned into de facto amnesty without any end in sight, and Trump wants to reverse this trend, and he will surely appeal this decision up to the Supreme Court if he has to.
Syria is not the first country to have TPS ended for its citizens. Since Trump took office, he has ended TPS for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
He has been challenged on the ending of TPS for Haitian nationals as well as those from Cameroon, with Burma and Ethiopia pending before the end of the year.
Let's face it, people from most countries in the world have it worse than people have it here in the U.S., even non-citizens.
Of course, if you make the immigration laws lax and let people know about it, you will get millions and millions of people flooding here from other countries.
But if we want the U.S. to stay at the top of the heap in its opportunities and lifestyle, then we can't have those numbers of migrants flocking here.
Trump knows this and he's actually doing something about it, no matter how much flack he gets for it.
He has restricted legal immigration a lot more than usual, but that could be because we have had at least 6 million illegal immigrants during the four years of the Biden administration.
Once ICE has a chance to do its job and get illegal immigrants back where they belong, maybe more legal immigration will be allowed.
An American citizen who served jail time in Saudi Arabia and was banned from leaving the country after his release in 2023 will now be released after a meeting between Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Donald Trump at the White House.
Police in Saudi Arabia arrested 75-year-old Saad Almadi during a family visit in 2021 after he suggested on X that a street in the country's capital be renamed after Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who died at a Saudi Arabian consulate in 2018.
He was accused of terrorism for that criticism of the Saudi royal family, sentenced to 13 years in jail, but was only jailed until 2023. He was not allowed to leave the country after being released, however.
Almadi's family was grateful for his release and credited Trump with arranging it.
"This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and the tireless efforts of his administration,” the Almadi family said in a statement after his release was announced. “We are deeply grateful to Dr. Sebastian Gorka and the team at the National Security Council, as well as everyone at the State Department.”
Why did the Saudi royal family consider Almadi's post to be critical of it?
Because there have been long-standing accusations that the crown prince ordered the operation that took Khashoggi out, even though Salman denies that he did so.
And how does criticizing the royal family of Saudi Arabia get turned into terrorism?
Well, you're on your own with that one.
In addition to Almadi's release, Trump also seemed to get another $400,000 in U.S. investments out of Salman.
It was a very productive meeting, by all accounts.
Trump has often bragged about his positive relationship with Saudi Arabia, but it hasn't always been evident in how the country has treated the U.S.
Now, Salman seems to be pleased with Trump's policies and appreciative that Trump is letting the whole Khashoggi thing slide. Not sure if that's a good idea or not, but I guess it's water under the $1 billion bridge now.
The Supreme Court has declined to hear oral arguments on a case in which a Florida athletic organization would not let a Christian school say a prayer over the loudspeaker before a championship game.
The court's decision in the case of Cambridge Christian School, Inc. v. Florida High School Athletic Association appeared Monday on a list of orders.
It was not signed and no explanation was given for the order.
The appeals court ruling in the case said that the use of the loudspeaker made the prayer "government speech."
Prior to the championship game in 2015 at Citrus Bowl stadium, it was common practice for Cambridge Christian School to say a prayer over the loudspeaker before games.
Cambridge was playing University Christian School in that game, and both teams requested the prayer.
Roger Dearing of FHSAA told the schools that the Citrus Bowl was "a public facility, predominantly paid for with public tax dollars, [making] the facility 'off limits' under federal guidelines and precedent court cases."
"In Florida Statutes, the FHSAA (host and coordinator of the event) is legally a 'State Actor,' we cannot legally permit or grant permission for such an activity," Dearing said at the time.
An appeals court in 2019 reversed a lower court decision upholding the ban, but further appeals reinstated the ban.
The argument given was that FHSAA was essentially regulating its own speech, which doesn't fall under the purview of the First Amendment.
It makes sense given that the two Christian schools were members of FHSAA and would be under its rules and leadership.
If SCOTUS saw the issue similarly, it wouldn't have a reason to take the case.
Though it seems counterintuitive for two teams who both agree they want to have a prayer to be told they can't, it seems that it can happen in a lawful way that makes sense at some level.
The intersection of secular and religious society has become a little too separate for me, but maybe it's for the best in the end.
A divided appeals court ruled last year that migrants must be allowed to apply for asylum in the U.S. even if they are stopped at the border before they actually enter the U.S.
President Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse this ruling and allow immigration officials to turn away asylum seekers before they get to the border and before they actually apply for asylum.
The case hinges on the court's interpretation of The Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows an “alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States” to apply for asylum.
Trump wants the high court to flip the current interpretation of the law, that migrants are considered "physically present" even if they are on the Mexico side of the border.
“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Solicitor General John Sauer said in a filing. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”
Immigration rights group Al Otro Lado obviously disagreed, according to Breitbart.
“Our immigration laws require the government to inspect and process people seeking asylum at ports of entry and allow them to pursue their legal claims in the United States,” it said in a statement.
“The government’s turnback policy was an illegal scheme to circumvent these requirements by physically blocking asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry and preventing them from crossing the border to seek protection,” Al Otro Lado said.
The group also argued that the turnback policy put families and individuals in jeopardy by forcing them to stay in unsafe conditions in Mexico while they wait for their asylum hearings.
Migrants have been assaulted, kidnapped, and murdered, they said.
Most would rather just give up than wait for potentially months or years in such conditions, but isn't that the point?
The vast majority of asylum seekers will be rejected, so letting an unlimited number of migrants into the country to await their hearings doesn't make sense.
That's how we ended up with millions of illegal immigrants in the country under former President Joe Biden, and Trump has pretty much turned all of that around just by adopting a stern attitude and letting migrants know his administration was going to make it hard on them.
Trump definitely has the right idea, and the court will hopefully see it his way.