Six killed in riots in Iran. Will anything change this time around?

 

Protests in Tehran. BBC/EPA.

At least six people have been killed during riots in Iran. BBC. Protests erupted after the economy collapsed. The Rial fell compared to the dollar by a large amount while inflation has been around 40% for the past few months. Iran is also facing skyrocketing food prices, a major water shortage and general economic chaos. Protesters have called for the end of the Iranian regime and even a return to monarchy. The President, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the regime would listen to "legitimate concerns" of the protesters, but vowed that security services would put down any threats to the regime. The protests are the most serious to hit Iran since 2022. 

My Comment:

We have seen this song and dance many times before. Iran has had major protests hit it every few years and it always ends the same way. With the security forces cracking down hard, mass arrests and eventually executions. I have little doubt that this will be how it ends this time. 

But I guess there is a chance that things will be different. After all, the economy in Iran is absolutely abysmal right now. Under Biden's four years in power we had about 20% inflation over four years and it was enough for him to be run out of the presidency, I can't imagine having to deal with 40% inflation each month since October. That's absolutely not sustainable and with the unemployment rate at 20% I would probably be protesting too. 

The problem is that Iran's security forces are still getting paid. As long as that is the case, they will be able to crack down on these protests with gusto. People aren't going to be willing to make arrests if they aren't getting paid, but if the money is there, they will crack down. If the economy gets so bad or the water situation gets worse, that could change, but right now I don't see them siding with the protesters. 

The protesters also are scattered and I don't think they have much in the way of leadership. They also don't have much in the way of international backing, though I am guessing Iran will blame the United States and Israel. Without that leadership and/or support they will have a very hard time actually overthrowing the regime. 

There is another factor too, and it's the fact that Iran has faced several major international failures, that may have eroded the regime's legitimacy a bit. First, they lost their biggest ally in the region, Syria with the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Their proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, have been degraded quite a bit as well, to the point where Hezbollah is no longer much of a factor. And they just lost a major war with Israel. Folks might argue that the war was a draw, or even that Iran won because their regime still stands, but the fact is that regardless, the country no longer has the war with Israel to motivate and unite their population. 

Regardless, I still say that Iran isn't going to collapse because of these protests. Yes, the economic conditions are terrible, but Iran has gotten very good at putting down protests, to the point it's almost an art form for them. Unless the economy completely dies to the point where the regime can't even pay their goons, or some other country tries to help the protesters, I just don't see anything changing. 

HHS freezes all child care funding in Minnesota in response to fraud allegations.

 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Politico/AP.

HHS has frozen all federal child care funding in Minnesota in response to serious accusations of fraud in the system. Politico. The move comes as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are investigating the Democratic leadership in the state and any connection they have to the fraud. 90 people have been arrested for federal fraud charges since 2021 and an independent state audit said that Governor Tim Walz did not "effectively exercise its authority” in response to the fraud. Walz said he was fighting the fraud and blamed President Trump for the issue. 

My Comment:

Things are escalating very quickly in the Minnesota fraud case and Governor Tim Walz will be lucky if he remains governor for much longer. Pulling funding from all of federal child care funding in Minnesota is a major move and one that will have massive repercussions for the state. In short, I don't think Minnesota is going to be able to actually pay for these daycares now and many of them will shut down. 

Supposedly, Minnesota gets about $200 million a year to fund child care from the federal government and now all of that money has been cut off. I doubt Minnesota has that much money just sitting around. $200 million is not something that can just be found in a mattress (unless you are running a Somali day care apparently). This is going to mean that those fake Somali daycares are going to be cut off from funds. 

But it also means that real Minnesota daycares are going to be cut off too. This isn't a great thing, child care costs in Minnesota are among the highest in the country and it means there is going to be a real effect in terms of costs. There are going to be staffing shortages, daycares being shut down and a lot of angry Minnesota parents.

That might be painful, but this kind of fraud absolutely has to be dealt with and heads absolutely have to roll. People are furious about the graft and stolen tax dollars and the one thing the federal government cannot do is just let this issue fester. Cutting off these funds will stop the outflow of tax dollars to these fraudulent daycares and  that is the most important thing that can happen right now. 

I know that I am angry about this too. The fraud in Minnesota increased the problem of high child care costs. These fake daycares sucked up tax dollars from both the Minnesota and Federal taxpayers. That money should have gone real daycares and if it had the cost of daycare should have gone down. The higher prices had an absolute effect. How many folks in Minnesota didn't have any kids because they couldn't afford it because of child care costs? How many had just one and no more? Given that the fertility crisis is real, this had a major effect on the future of the state. 

As for Tim Walz, I can't imagine he survives this disaster politically. His response has been pathetic, he wants to make this about President Trump, but at some point that isn't going to work. I honestly think the media is starting to turn on him. This was the top story on Google News today and it isn't just conservative outlets covering the story anymore. Even the Politico article was fairly balanced. That's a real bad sign for Walz, when the mainstream media is publishing critical stories about a Democratic Politician, you know the story has legs. 

The real question is if Walz avoids prison. In the past, with this scandal and the Minnesota State Senator assassination case, I said that Walz had a perfect defense in that nobody is going to believe that he's involved in crime due to his obvious stupidity. But given how blatant the fraud was and how ineffective the state was in fighting it, I am beginning to wonder. 

From what I understand, these fraudsters, either in the current daycare scandal or the older "Feeding our Families" covid era scam, many of the players were regularly donating to Democratic politicians in this state. It's still an open question if the Democrats themselves had knowledge that these donations were from stolen taxpayer dollars. Even if they didn't, this is a stain on the elections in the state, tax payer dollars going to only one party in a fraudulent fashion is obviously bad. 

But I am also worried that they did know. Indeed, it's an open secret that the Democrats support this kind of immigration so they can import voters. But it's very likely they do it so they can get funding they syphon off of the government. If that is what happened here and any Democratic politician was aware of it, including but not limited to Tim Walz, then these people need to go to prison.  

President Trump announced major strike on Venezuelan dock facility.

 

President Donald Trump. BBC/Reuters. 

President Donald Trump announced a major strike on a Venezuelan dock facility suspected to be involved in drug smuggling. BBC. Trump was cagey on the details, and did not reveal where the facility was, who had hit it, and when the attack occurred. Venezuela has not responded to the incident either. Trump had made threats to attack the Venezuelan mainland to deal with drug smugglers and the attack would be the first one targeting Venezuelan territory directly. Trump has launched major strikes against narco smugglers in a campaign to curtail fentanyl trafficking. The campaign, which has included taking Venezuelan oil tankers, is putting pressure on Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro to step down. 

My Comment:

Not a lot of details on this story, but it's worth covering as it's a major escalation in the battle against the drug smugglers. This is an obvious step up from the campaign against drug boats, which has been a low intensity conflict. Blowing up a smuggler dock in Venezuelan territory (assuming that is where it is, details are lacking) is a new step in this conflict. We don't know if it was an air strike or some kind of CIA op, but in either case it would be an escalation. 

I hate the hedging the news with these strikes. It's very clear that these are all drug boats and drug smugglers getting blown up. They want people to think that Trump is just blowing up a bunch of fishermen or something. Fishermen don't tend to run speed boats with no fishing equipment.

I am guessing the same thing will be said about this strike as well, and in this case the lack of transparency will help the media out. We don't know very much about these strikes, or even where they happened. This is going to give the media a lot of room to speculate as to what happened. In previous strikes they released video to show exactly what happened. Sure, the media tried to spin it anyways, but with the video it could be clearly seen by anyone who wasn't a rabid partisan that the vessels were indeed drug boats. They should absolutely do the same thing here, and I wonder if Trump jumped the gun a bit, announcing the strikes before video was ready. 

As for the Venezuela campaign, this probably won't actually change much. It's not like Venezuela can respond in any way. The most they could probably do is file a protest with the UN, which will be promptly ignored and won't change anything regardless. Venezuela's military is a joke and they cannot respond to attacks like this. 

I also don't think this will do a whole lot to increase the pressure on Nicholas Maduro. There were rumors that he was considering leaving the country, but I don't think one strike on a drug dock is going to be the thing that pushes him out of power. The blockade of sanctioned oil tankers is going to be a lot more effective as it will directly effect the bottom line of the Venezuelan government for every oil tanker that doesn't make it to delivery. 

But I do think it was a good warning for Maduro. The strike does show America's unquestioned military supremacy over Venezuela. We were able to strike a drug facility with impunity so that also means we could do the same thing to Maduro, assuming we had the intelligence to find out where he is. That has to be in the back of Maduro's mind and it may contribute to him leaving power voluntarily. 

The FBI is investigating more fraud in Minnesota after viral daycare fraud reports.

 

FBI Director Kash Patel. Reuters.

The FBI is investigating more fraud in Minnesota after claims of daycare fraud went viral over the weekend. Reuters. In the past months, widespread fraud from the Somali community has gone viral in multiple major cases. The FBI has "surged" resources to the state and FBI Director Kash Patel mentioned recent social media reports alleging corruption in the state's child care industry. The majority of people charged with fraud in the state has been of Somalian descent. 

The viral video alleging fraud can be seen below. 

🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable

We ALL… pic.twitter.com/E3Penx2o7a

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 26, 2025

My Comment:

The above video has 100 million views and has gone absurdly viral. It's pretty rare for a post to go quite that viral on X these days so that's an accomplishment. The video was by an independent journalists that simply went up to daycares in Minnesota and asked them if they had any kids, or tried to enroll. The response was not what you would expect if they were legitimate businesses, and no children were apparently found. These daycares were taking in millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, all for these ghost students. Shirley estimates that he uncovered at least $100 million in fraud. 

Reuters hedged a lot on their reporting here, they absolutely didn't want to cite Shirley's video. The mainstream media has largely downplayed these scandals in Minnesota, the allegations over the weekend are certainly not the only ones. Indeed, the FBI resources sent to Minnesota have a lot more to do with the fraud from those earlier investigations than the more recent ones. 

Democrats too appear to be downplaying the scandal. Instead of cutting Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar loose, they are doubling down on defending them. I am thinking they are just hoping that this issue will simply go away or they can successfully reframe the whole thing as racism. But I just don't see that happening this time. 

Why? Because I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I am guessing if investigations continue, they will find more programs that the Somali community has use to defraud taxpayers. So far it's been food programs and daycares, but I am sure there are a lot of more programs in the state that has Somali based grift. And keep in mind, remittances from these programs are being funneled to Somalia, where it is fueling both sides of that country's Civil War, including the terror group, al-Shabaab. 

I have no doubt that there are similar levels of fraud in other states with large Somali populations. Minnesota is obviously the biggest, but there are other states that have them as well, including my state of Wisconsin. I am guessing if investigations were started in my state they would find similar problems, though probably not on the scale they have in Minnesota. 

This whole scandal gives me vibes of the Afghanistan debacle, of all things. During that war, the Afghan Army had, on paper, a large and powerful army. But it was mostly a lie as many of the soldiers listed on the records were "ghost soldiers", soldiers that only really existed on paper, and were not actually fighting. They were just drawing benefits. This is another example of a similar concept where these students didn't actually exist but the daycares were getting benefits based on these "ghost students". A similar problem was found with Minnesota's autism program, where Somali children were being diagnosed for the benefits and then left without any help, because they weren't in fact autistic. 

This scandal just feels incredibly embarrassing to me as an American. I brought up the "ghost soldier" problems in Afghanistan and Iraq as I used to argue that it was a major reason why US support there was mostly pointless. Given that Afghanistan fell and Iraq almost did, I was right. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. America has always had issues with fraud but it usually isn't this blatant or as "third world" as we are seeing in Minnesota.  

The worst part of this is how unnesecery all of this was. We never had any reason to bring these people into the country in the first place. Somali was never our responsibility. We did go there back in the 1990's to help starving people, but it just ended with the Battle of Mogadishu and 18 dead soldiers, most of them from the Army Rangers. At that point we had done enough and should have just thrown up our hands, but instead we allowed these people to come here and we didn't even keep an eye on what they are doing, and now we have third world fraud in our first world country. None of this needed to happen. 

And I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Somali community has drawn most of the attention, but I am guessing this kind of thing is extremely common in blue states. And it's not just coming from immigrant communities, but American born ones as well. The problem is the lack of prosecution and the huge number of social programs that have little in the way of oversite. The Somalis have been the most blatant about it, but I am guessing that every state has a lot of fraud like this and much of it is centered on blue states with generous social welfare programs. People go to where the money is and when you can steal it without fear, why wouldn't you? 

Murder rate in the United States drops 20% over a year, possibly the biggest decline ever.

 

Chart from RTCI showing the decline in murders. New York Post.

The murder rate in the United States has dropped an unprecedented 20% in 2025. New York Post. Between January and October in 2024 the United States had 7,369 murders but during the same time period in 2025 only 5,912 occurred. The figures include homicides, but exclude manslaughter, justified homicide and accidental killings. The collapse was mirrored in large cities like Chicago, New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles, all of which had double digit lower rates of homicide. Mass murders too declined to a rate not seen since 2006. The rate had already begun to drop with 2024 seeing a 15% decrease compared to 2023, when the pandemic era highs started to drop. Other crimes, like aggravated assault and car theft has decreased as well. 

My Comment:

In order to figure out why the crime rate has finally started to decline, we have to understand why in boomed out of control in the first place. Much of the blame can be placed on the Biden administration and Black Lives Matter. Both pushed major police reforms that punished police for doing their jobs and did everything in their power to ensure that more criminals were let out with things like lower sentences and bail reform. 

This, combined with the economic and social effects of the pandemic, caused crime to explode. Some of that happened during Trump's first time, a consequence of not cracking down on the BLM insurrection, but Biden and his administration saw the reforms that big city Democrats had put into place and put them into place nationally. 

This was, predictably, a disaster. Police were too afraid arrest criminals due to fear of getting prosecuted like Dereck Chauvin was. Bail reform allowed so many criminals to continue to commit crimes while awaiting the justice system. And Biden threw open the gates to illegal immigration, which led to a huge amount of 100% preventable crimes. 

Some of these policies were reversed or at least toned down as Biden and the Democrats apparently realized how badly it was playing for them. They kept some, they never did a single thing to try and reduce illegal immigration, but this reversal was the reason the crime rate started to drop between 2023 and 2024. 

President Trump pretty much reversed everything that was left. He cracked down on crime in big cities to the point where he deployed the national guard. He also deported quite a few of the worst of the worst of illegal immigrants and convinced a lot more of them to go home themselves, around 2.5 million by most estimates combined. 

I think there was also a major psychological impact as well. Folks understood that there wasn't much reason not to be a criminal under Joe Biden. Everyone knew the police were emasculated and hindered while the Democratic Party seemed to be directly supporting Criminals. Trump ran as a law and order President and that obviously changed the idea that you could easily get away with crime. This probably didn't have a huge effect, but I do think it is real.   

Critics are saying that this is just a regression to the mean. Of course that is somewhat true, but it ignores why the crime rate exploded in the first place. Democrats deserve the credit for that for sure. But I do think that Trump's policies are at least somewhat responsible for the crime rate dropping. Like I always say, every crime committed by a illegal alien is a preventable, so it obviously follows that getting rid of illegal aliens is a great way to reduce crimes.