The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Rampant Fraud and Betrayal in Minnesota

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe published in City Journal an investigation of the enormous fraud and criminality committed by some in the Somali community in Minneapolis: “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.” This report elevated the story to national prominence. The New York Times followed with an essay soon afterwards: “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services on Tim Walz’s Watch.”

An eruption of information has come forth within a couple of weeks. Much of the recent revelations have built on the diligent reporting done in Minnesota over many years by Bill Glahn, Center for the American Experiment, Alpha News, and Powerline blog. The following are important aspects of the crime:

The Minnesota Department of Human Services posted on X under the title “Minnesota Staff Fraud Reporting Commentary.” The following comments purportedly represent the views of 480 current staff:

“Tim Walz is 100 percent responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz [Governor of Minnesota] know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL [ Democratic-Farmer-Labor] members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to. In addition to retaliating against whistleblowers, Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance. Media and politicians supporting Tim Walz or the DFL-agenda attacked whistleblowers who were trying to raise red flags on fraudulent activities. This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz. Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet — even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers.”

This is a remarkable document. Usually, bureaucracy works hand in glove with the Democratic party. The more money and the larger the number of people who cycle the money through the system, the sturdier the roots of social services grow in society. In this case the state personnel in Minnesota were so alarmed at the scope of the fraud that they felt compelled to draw attention to the fraud. The amount of fraud must surely be egregious.

Rufo and Thorp comment:

“If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) program. The HSS program, the first of its kind in the country, was launched with a noble goal: To help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill secure housing. It was designed with ‘low barriers to entry’ and ‘minimal requirements for reimbursement.’”

The HSS program was designed with the best intentions of Minnesotans to lift up those who could not help themselves. Yet their good-hearted generosity was leveraged against them by a criminal portion of the Somali community that does not appreciate the kindness offered to them.

Rufo and Thorp go on:

“The Housing Stabilization Services fraud is hardly the first or most significant cause of corruption. In fact, it is small beer compared to the Feeding Our Future fraud, which is the largest case (so far) of COVID-era fraud, the daycare fraud scandal, which barely got attention, or the autism services frauds. . . . Fraud is everywhere, including in elections. It is the bedrock of power for the Somalis who now run the Democratic Party in Minneapolis, where Ilhan Omar is one of the key power players as the Congresswoman from the 5th District. Somalis are so powerful that our politics are now determined by which rival clan can muster the most power. Even Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor who just scraped by to win reelection against a Somali candidate, campaigns in Somalia. . . . Frey was able to win reelection by creating a coalition between white voters and a Somali clan that competes with Omar Fateh’s.”

Rufo and Thorp quote David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator and a nonprofit leader:

“The media does not want to put a light on this. . . . And if you’re a politician, it’s a significant disadvantage for you to alienate the Somali community. If you don’t win the Somali community, you can’t win Minneapolis. And if you don’t win Minneapolis, you can’t win the state. End of story.”

There are parallels between Minneapolis and Britain. In Britain, both the Labour Party and the Tory Party before them have chosen over decades not to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into Britain. The political establishment has favored the mostly Muslim immigrants over the British middle and working classes. Newly arrived illegal immigrants are provided with lavish housing at hotels at public expense. The men among the immigrants are a menace to the British women and girls nearby them. For decades, gangs of mostly Pakistani men have groomed and gang-raped teenaged girls. Reports of this egregious abuse have been either ignored or suppressed by both the local and national political establishment. The police themselves have been alleged to connive with, and even participate with, the rapist gangs. Muslim immigrants in Britain have become numerous enough that they are a significant segment of voters. British lawmakers solicit Muslims votes, even when native Britons are betrayed, and British society, culture, and law are trashed.

Joe Thompson is the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota who investigated, brought charges, and prosecuted fraud cases in Minnesota. Minnesota State Senator Mark Koran cites Joe Thompson’s answer to the question of how many criminal referrals came from the State of Minnesota: “None.” In other words, there were no criminal referrals for fraud that originated from Keith Ellison, Tim Walz, or the heads of Minnesota agencies. It was the U.S. Attorney who acted against the fraud in Minneapolis — not Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, nor Governor Tim Walz.

U.S. Attorney Thompson announced the indictments at a press conference and said:

“‘The vast majority’ of the Housing Stabilization Service program was fraudulent. . . . Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just overbilling. . . . These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that’s unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota. . . . [many firms enrolled in the program] operated out of dilapidated storefronts or rundown office buildings. [Many owners of companies] billed other Medicaid programs, such as the EIDBI autism program, the . . . Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services program, the Integrated Community Support program, the Community Access for Disability Inclusion program, PCA services, and other Medicaid-waivered services. . . . 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. . . . From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services, and now autism services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network. . . . This network [of] fraud schemes . . . form a web . . . [that has stolen] billions of dollars in taxpayer money.”

Rufo and Thorp write that Feeding Our Future, HSS, and the autism services cases are not the only examples. Twenty-eight other cases of fraud have been discovered since Walz became governor in 2019. Most of these huge enterprises of fraud were perpetrated by members of the Somali community, according to two former FBI officials who spoke with City Journal.

Rufo and Thorp write that 59 people have been convicted of fraudulent schemes so far in Minnesota. At least $1 billion of taxpayers’ money was stolen, which is more than Minnesota spends annually on its Department of Corrections. The dollar amount of the fraud that is widely accepted so far in news reports is $1 billion, but some estimates could go as high as $9 billion or more. Thompson referred to the looting of 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota as “staggering industrial-scale fraud.” Half of the $18 billion spent on Medicaid could have been fraudulent, Thompson said. Various agencies of the federal government are now investigating fraud in the Somali communities, not only in Minnesota but also throughout the U.S. Hopefully, the truth will come to light.

Rufo and Thorp connect the dots between fraud in Minnesota and money sent to Somalia:

“The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion — more than the Somali government’s budget for that year. According to Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Somalis ran a sophisticated money network, spanning from Seattle to Minneapolis, and were routing significant amounts of cash on commercial flights from the Seattle airport to the hawala networks in Somalia. One of these networks, Kerns discovered, sent $20 million abroad in a single year. . . . The amount of money was staggering.”

Kerns investigated the hawalas in Somalia that received the money transfers. Kerns found, primarily through human sources, that significant funds were being sent from America to Al-Shabaab through hawalas networks in Somalia. “Whether the money was intended for Al-Shabaab or not, they were taking a cut,” said Kerns. Al-Shabaab is a terrorist group aligned with Al Qaeda.

The story of Somali fraud in Minneapolis is a cautionary tale. The criminality that occurred in Minnesota is a culmination of what happens when DEI policies come together with unvetted mass immigration. Democrats see nothing wrong with open borders and unlimited benefits bestowed on both legal and illegal immigrants. The huge amount of money that was stolen by organized crime in Minnesota was taken from the truly needy, says Minnesota State Senator Julia Coleman, who sees cuts in aid to nursing homes and to special education programs in schools. Those needy people were betrayed by the pompous, self-righteous hypocrites of the Walz administration. These elite Democrats in Minnesota believe there is no end of taxpayer money, so they can shrug off a billion dollars, or more, of fraud. Middle- and working-class Americans suffer when large numbers of foreigners come to live in the U.S. without the intention of abiding by American laws. Americans are justified in our expectations that immigrants must assimilate to American culture. Generations before us understood the value of American citizenship and the melting pot. Immigrants of the past wanted to become Americans. Too many newcomers today are ungrateful and eager to take advantage of our generosity. They don’t care to become Americans in their hearts — they would rather cheat.     *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Thank You, Allan Brownfeld!

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

One of the unique qualities about The St. Croix Review that I have noticed as the editor over the years is the loyalty of its writers and readers. I have written, in my scrawled handwriting that you recognize, a multitude of thank you notes in response to your generous donations. I know your names, though I tend to forget your addresses. I am grateful for all of you. Some of you have little money to spare, but you contribute, nonetheless. Typically, we hang on to our subscribers for decades! Our writers are also of the same quality.

It is my duty to communicate the passing of a highly valued author for The St. Croix Review: Allan C. Brownfeld passed away on August 4, 2025. He was 85. From the fourth issue of the first year of publication, Allan was a regular contributor to The St. Croix Review. For 58 years, his essays have appeared in our pages, with an average of eight pages per issue. I don’t believe anyone, including the editors, will ever surpass Allan’s prolific accomplishment.

The themes of Allan’s writing were the importance of education and a reverence for the founding statesmen, the constitutional order, the ideals, the civil rights, and the history of the United States of America. Allan loved that America was open to people from anywhere on Earth. He acknowledged that certain ethnicities encountered prejudice and hardship in America. Allan was an outspoken advocate for the advancement of civil rights for black Americans, when to do so was not easy. Allan was a tireless asserter of liberty and opportunity for all Americans. He also promoted a clear-eyed assessment of historical truth. While he was a champion of black civil rights, he also wrote that the institution of slavery was ubiquitous through all the nations of Earth, and that American statesmen were at the forefront in the effort to end it. He stated that all races were both perpetrators and victims of slavery — a perspective that is not acknowledged by leftist intellectuals.

The following are selections of his themes:

“The Founding Fathers understood very well that freedom was not man’s natural state. Their political philosophy was based on a fear of government power and the need to limit and control that power very strictly. It was their fear of total government which initially caused them to rebel against the arbitrary rule of King George III. In the Constitution they tried their best to construct a form of government which, through a series of checks and balances and a clear division of powers, would protect the individual.”\

“In recent days, the history of the United States has become the subject of widespread discussion and debate. Some have argued that this history is deeply flawed, pointing to the existence of slavery. In 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, slavery was legal everywhere in the world and was an intrinsic part of the biblical Judeo-Christian tradition. Slavery dominated Ancient Greece and Rome. Many at the Constitutional Convention wanted to eliminate it at the beginning, but that, unfortunately, was not accomplished until the Civil War. Some contemporary critics, such as the author of The 1619 Project, suggest that slavery was somehow unique to America and even argue that the American Revolution was fought, in part, to maintain slavery. Neither of these ideas, as many historians have pointed out, bears any relationship to real history.”

“It was always my hope that our society would see freedom expand rather than contract. This seemed to be happening. I lived in the South during the years of segregation. Slowly, we saw it come to an end. When I was in law school, I wrote a law review article about Virginia’s law against racial intermarriage. It seemed strange to me that Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere in the South said they believed in freedom but welcomed laws limiting freedom — with regard to marriage, schools, restaurants, and virtually every aspect of society. Finally, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional.”

“Sadly, the teaching of American history has dramatically declined in our schools. A 2016 report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni even found that two-thirds of top U.S. colleges do not even require history majors to take a single course in U.S. history. How many young people know that ours is the longest existing form of government in the world? No other country in 2021 lives under the same form of government that existed in their countries in 1787. In the Constitution, the Framers established religious freedom, separation of church and state, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. These did not really exist anyplace else in the world at that time.”

“How sad that we are not transmitting our unique history to the younger generation of Americans. It is time that we change course, as the latest indication that pride in America is declining makes clear. And our politicians who continue to insult one another and question the loyalty of their adversaries should think before they speak and weigh their words more carefully. In the past, our politicians found it possible to disagree without being disagreeable. In the current age of social media and Twitter, people speak before they think, and often regret their words. Civility in our political discourse would represent an important ingredient in restoring the pride in America which is now in decline — along with a serious and fair teaching of our history, its great achievements as well as its shortcomings. No human enterprise is without fault, but few have the achievements which Americans used to view with pride.”

You may find decades of Allan’s essays at our website — www.stcroixreview.com.

Allan C. Brownfeld was a Virginian and a fair-minded American Patriot. He was always a gentleman. His example is sorely missed now.     *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Are Your Heroes Worthy Enough?

Barry MacDonald

A person needs a method of organization to begin a day with purposeful energy. Have you ever stopped to take account of the quality of the ideas that motivate you? How much of what you do arises from the impetus of resentment or fear? Does cynicism wear away at your morale?

Doctors have a habit of measuring pain on a scale of one to ten. On such a scale where does your bitterness lie? Where on a scale of vengeance would you guess that your family or neighbors reside? Isn’t it odd that as material comforts and technological advantages go, Americans are exceptionally lucky people, yet we may not appreciate our good fortune?

The malign influence of Karl Marx, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Saul Alinsky persists. These men studied masses of humanity and seized on the proclivity of people to be cleverly herded under a spell of fear, envy, greed, and hatred. These dark intellectuals didn’t create human nature, but they infected society with techniques of manipulation that typify the nature of news, politics, and entertainment. Perhaps society will never be free from the taint of Marx, Machiavelli, and Alinsky.

Have you stopped to consider how much of your awareness is driven by allegiance to heroes? Our voluntary associations provide us with the numerical strength that we lack on our own. We need leaders who are compatible with us for knowledge and encouragement. We are hemmed about with unique difficulties that separate and isolate us. We carry solitary and burdensome worries that may be hard to articulate and communicate. Our leaders are examples of honesty, integrity, courage, wisdom, and endurance. We also learn these qualities from friends, loved ones, and worthy partnerships.

I don’t have to solve the world’s problems by myself. My heroes help me to see around corners to solutions that I could never have come to from an isolated perspective. I do a survey of my associates and identify those whom I trust and respect. My high-profile heroes are prominent characters of tremendous societal sway. They are decisive and demonstrate panache. They are brave and are sometimes victorious against the malefactors that surround them (and me also). My heroes have a store of invaluable knowledge. I will never stop learning from their stalwart arsenal of wisdom. Many of my heroes aren’t alive, but I can ponder layers within layers of their instruction. The willingness to be unpopular for a good cause is a noble quality.

Every person chooses their own heroes both consciously and unconsciously. History and literature are stuffed with heroic paragons. Whom have you chosen? Who are your heroes of sports, politics, history, philosophy? Which entertainers, actors, actresses, directors, and satirists do you enjoy? How often does politics come into play? How often do you laugh?

It is a conundrum that the direction of politics seemingly must devolve to Machiavellian and Marxist tricks. When one side resorts to the mass broadcast of big lies with the connivance of big media, how is the other to respond? Once the electorate has been brainwashed and polarized what is to be done? Escalation occurs in words and deeds, so that political rhetoric becomes relentless and ruthless. As in warfare, escalation leads to increased barbarism, so former standards of decency are lost. How are the cycles of accusation to be ended? Doesn’t it take a bully to defeat a bully?

So much of American political discourse has been reduced to a tribalism that is blind to subtlety and difficulty. Politics is a gossipy stew that summons prurient interest. It is hard not to take pleasure in an opponent’s misery, or to indulge a hunger for vengeance.

I can talk to almost everyone in a respectful manner about daily concerns. Only when topics of politics are broached must I tread with care. I recognize soon enough how much genuine communication is possible. I don’t waste words on people who are hypnotized.

It is a shame that feminism has demonized fatherhood. “A woman’s right to choose” is an effective catch phrase with formidable leverage on the issues of abortion. Men are villainized and ostracized. Relations between men and women are complicated in America. Too many Americans believe that husbands and fathers are not necessarily relevant to women. The bitter feminist espousal of “toxic masculinity” has given rise to the emergence “toxic femininity” that expresses hatred for half of humanity. If men do not assume their natural duties to be loving fathers to their children, how will they ever learn to grow up? Angry feminists want revenge for the proclaimed scourge of “patriarchy.” There is no end to their bitterness. Everyone suffers as a result, especially boys. Children, especially boys, need a responsible, admirable father figure in a household to learn by example.

A new term was invented in 2019 that describes the estrangement between men and women. The word “Heteropessimism” was coined by Asa Seresin. The word’s origin was academic, from the University of New England. Heteropessimism is believed to be the obstinate prejudice against the heterosexual experience by heterosexuals. It is a modern malady articulated by intellectuals.

Most of my heroes are not involved in politics. For my sanity I have to detach from the poisoned brew of partisan politics for portions of my day. I start my day with meditation books. My friends are examples of integrity and responsibility. They are good fathers and mothers. We are concerned with a multiplicity of details, daily, weekly, and monthly, that need to be addressed with infinite care. The energy that I put into good order and direction buoys me. My attention to mundane but necessary chores provides a healthy perspective on national politics that helps me to discern the true from the false. Truth has resonance while deceit feels slimy.

People have a duty to find sources of positive energy. Over millennia millions of wise and inspirational words have been written. We can choose to drink deeply of wisdom.     *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Joe Rogan Talks to Kash Patel, Director of the FBI

Editorial — Barry MacDonald

Alongside talk radio and Substack, an army of podcasters has risen to challenge and counter the preeminence of the mainstream media. Ordinary Americans who thirst for a more balanced and trustworthy presentation of events may turn to a multitude of informed and patriotic podcasters for daily commentary.

A most highly rated podcaster is Joe Rogan. In the Joe Rogan Experience, #2334 Episode, he interviewed Kash Patel, the current Director of the FBI. The following are bullet points taken from their conversation. A full video of their discussion is available on YouTube.

• Kash Patel cites U.S. government statistics. He says that in previous years 100,000 people were dying of drug overdoses a year — one every seven minutes. A child was being raped every six and a half minutes in America. There were two homicides an hour.
• The precursors for the production of fentanyl comes from the Communist Chinese Party. There are hundreds of companies “standing up” in mainland China that ship the precursors throughout the world. The Chinese claim that they don’t make fentanyl, but they manufacture the ingredients and move them to Mexico. Patel’s FBI has organized a massive enterprise to go after the fentanyl precursor companies in mainland China. The Chinese are shipping precursors to India and Canada as well as Mexico to have the drugs assembled. Because the Trump Administration closed the southern border, the ingredients are flown to Vancouver, manufactured there, and smuggled into America from the North.
• There aren’t deaths from fentanyl in China, India, England, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. Patel asserts that the Chinese view America as an adversary. The Chinese long-term game is to “kneecap” the U.S., to take out generations of young men and women who would grow up to be soldiers, police, or teachers. There is not much profit in the fentanyl business for the Chinese. Their goal is to kill Americans.
• The Trump Administration is taking an “all-of-government” approach to fentanyl. The FBI is working with the Secretary of the Treasury to apply sanctions to the production companies. The FBI is cooperating with Five Eyes partners, the English-speaking countries of Canada, America, England, New Zealand, and Australia. The U.S. shares intelligence with them. Patel reminds U.S. partners that “The CCP just hasn’t directed it at you yet.” Fentanyl isn’t being deployed in their countries, but it is being manufactured there. Patel wants those factories shut down. There has not been a reduction in the amount of fentanyl precursors that China makes, but the Trump administration is crushing fentanyl trafficking. China is adapting. They seek other ways into American besides the southern border. Patel promises that “we will not have kids dying of fentanyl overdoses in our streets. . . . Just give me a little bit more time.”
• In Patel’s own words: “They [the manufacturers] are so demonic in their ways. . . . Once they get the precursors from the CCP, they take their pill presses and they make fake oxycodone. . . . make tens of thousands of pills of fake oxycodone and we bust them for it. And in that fake pill is fentanyl. It’s laced with fentanyl that kills people. . . . Then the drug trafficking organizations make it appealing for the youth, shape this illicit narcotic in the form of candy and gummy bears. So you have kids in New York who just have a trace amount, touch it, and are also dying from it. . . . So, they have absolutely no rules or boundaries whatsoever when it comes to how they deploy fentanyl to get into our population. It could be through another drug. It could be through a synthetic. It could be through a fake drug . . . . Thousands of pounds of material that looks like candy. . . . It just looks appealing to kids, right? So inner-city youth, they put a pill down on the table, put a gummy bear down on the table. You know, a younger person’s going to be like, oh, that’s cool. Let me try that. I mean, I can tell you stories from now until the entire show. About high school kids on the verge of graduating. And they went out and took a pill that they thought was, you know, an upper. But it happened to be laced with fentanyl. They died. Their parents are calling. They’re destroyed. And people are like, well, we got to go after the drug traffickers. I’m like, we do, and we are. But my job is to educate the American public on the root cause of the fentanyl that is destroying our society.
• “I literally just got off the phone with the Indian government. I said, I need your help. This stuff’s coming into your country, and then they’re moving it from your country because India is not consuming fentanyl. They’re not. No one’s dying over there from fentanyl. But I need you and your help. So, my FBI is over there working with the heads of their government law enforcement authorities to say, we’re going to find these companies that buy it. And we’re going to shut them down. We’re going to sanction them. We’re going to arrest them where we can. We’re going to indict them in America if we can. We’re going to indict them in India if we can. Start indicting them in places like Canada and the UK and England and Australia. This is a global problem. And the reason it’s gotten so bad is because nobody did anything for four years. You know, people are like, how do they stand this up? Well, if you give the CCP [time], that has an endless amount of money to deploy in human capital, that’s what happens. It metastasizes.
• “Look, to me, I’m a National Security guy. And anything that kills 100,000 people a year is a National Security crisis, right? It’s what we call a tier one threat. And the last administration did not classify the drug trafficking enterprise as a prime threat against the American people. [the Biden Administration reoriented] the system of intelligence collection operations. . . . I’m not making this up. They said climate change is our biggest priority. DEI is our biggest priority. You guys have heard this, and you’ve had guests on that say it. But these are the ramifications in real life. I only have X amount of people that can target something, right? Same with the CIA, same with the DOD. But if the United States government and Uncle Sam and your commander in chief say, hey, I need your X amount of people looking here, I can’t clone that army to look back at fentanyl. Plus, we have to follow the chain of command.
• “So, I’ll give you a better example. So, I was in the end of the last Trump administration. I was Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense. One of the greatest jobs. At the time, I thought the greatest job I’d ever have. And when we left, we said [to the Biden Administration], hey, you know, Iran’s a huge threat. Never let up on the counterterrorism mission. We still have hostages out there we got to find and bring home. And the narcotics mission is a big priority. We handed off our playbook and we said, look, this is not a political issue. This is protecting the American people and our allies. So, we hope you guys continue this effort. So, the DOD has this thing called CONOPS, concept of operations. The Department of Defense has three million employees. And a CONOP is how you move the machine of the Department of Defense. Hey, we have a threat in [some part of the world]. How many carrier groups are we sending down there? We got a threat with government X. What are we doing operationally, kinetically? What are we doing for intelligence collection? That’s a CONOP. The first concept of operation that the Biden administration launched at the Department of Defense was on climate change.”
• [Rogan asks]: “What do you think that’s all about? As an outsider. . . I just don’t understand. Where’s the profit in this? . . . . What’s the motive? What would incentivize all these people to get on board with it without someone logically stepping in and saying, hey, this is not our top priority?”
• “So that was something I tried to answer when I was out of government for the last four years before I took this job. And the answer lay in the first Trump term. We were doing things so effectively on national security that hadn’t been done before. In such speed and volume that the media hated us for it because the other party had tried to do it and failed. So, when it comes to, okay, hostages, I could talk about that forever too. It used to be counterterrorism was a big portfolio. I ran it for the White House and National Security Council in the first Trump administration. . . . People don’t know this, President Trump in his first term brought home and rescued over 50 hostages and detainees from around the world. That’s more than every president before him combined.
• “Did you hear about the successes of reuniting families with lost loved ones from Africa and the Middle East, or these operations that the president was courageous enough to greenlight to go into places like Afghanistan, and do these hostage rescue ops and use SEAL Team 6 and Delta, or take out guys like Baghdadi and Soleimani? President Trump’s directive was simple. We are going to protect the homeland. We’re not going to endanger the lives of our armed forces and our intelligence community. But their job is to protect the homeland. And he said go. And we went. And I think there was such a resounding success that the media had such a hatred for President Trump and his administration. They just said, one, we’re not going to give you the credit, two, we’re going to put out a ton of disinformation, which we can get into. And three, [the Biden Administration] just said, and this is my opinion, we’re not going to do any of the stuff that worked because then we’ll have to attribute it to Trump’s policies. So, we’re going to go off on our end. And I keep asking people to prove me wrong.
• . . . . You had the Secretary of Defense in the Biden administration . . . go to a hospital, MIA, literally AWOL, and didn’t tell the commander in chief, and broke the National Command Authority. . . . And I was a guy responsible for the nuclear football for a part of my time at the White House. . . . There is an unbroken chain of command between President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Command Authority at all times because shit happens. And what if it had happened in that one or two weeks the guy was in the hospital, and maybe something did, and we don’t even know. Right. But no one, including the president, didn’t know the Secretary of Defense was in the hospital. I can’t tell you how big of a cataclysmic failure for the national security mission that is. And what I tell people when they’re like, that’s all right, it’s not that big of a deal. What if Hegseth [Secretary of DOD] took a week out and said, I’m going to the hospital, I’m not telling anyone. What do you think the media would do to that guy and Trump if that were to happen now? There’s a plan in place. Deputy Secretary of Defense comes in. You know, every time a senior goes out, there is a continuity of government plan in place. Oh, you’re out for a weekend treatment. No problem.”

******

Alert Americans who paid attention to the mismanagement of the country surely suspected that the Biden Administration’s priorities were badly misplaced. To care more about climate change and DEI than the 100,000 Americans dying each year of fentanyl is a monstrous indictment. The spiteful hatred on the part of the Biden Administration and the media not to give the Trump Administration due credit for his national security accomplishments is another catastrophic moral failing. That Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, would go AWOL for two weeks is a black mark of fecklessness. The Democratic Party has sunk to a low, disreputable form of politics. It is difficult to see how they may regain their integrity with their present leaders.      *

The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

A Chasm of Division in America

Barry MacDonald — Editorial

One may think of other times in history when America was bitterly fractured over differences of politics and culture.

The division caused by the Vietnam War, along with the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., with the civil rights movement and race riots, and with the Manson murders is an equivalent to the trouble in America now. Family members were bitterly estranged over opinions that could not be reconciled. There was great doubt about the worthiness and goodness of America. American leaders had lied to the public about important issues. The Vietnam War started through dubious means and progressed with deficient strategy and poor leadership. Over time stalemate disintegrated America’s trust in its presidents and generals. The measurement of success through the relatively high numbers of enemy dead compared with American dead came to be seen as cynical, senseless, barbaric, and unworthy. Poor whites and minorities were drafted without access to the deferment that more affluent Americans enjoyed. The poor were unwillingly sent to a war they believed to be unjust and unworthy of the sacrifice of their lives.

The mystery that surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a wound that never healed. Americans began to mistrust and hate their government. The secrecy of the bureaucracy was noticed, loathed, and despised.

Marxist agitators infiltrated university campuses in groups like the Weathermen Underground that carried out terrorist bombings throughout America. Patty Hearst, granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Nineteen months after her abduction she became a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was arrested for bank robbery. She had been brainwashed by Leftist ideology.

The Watergate impeachment saga, the forced resignation of President Nixon, President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, the abandonment of South Vietnam, and the victory of Communist North Vietnam were flashpoints in a dark era of American history. The prestigious media triumphed over the downfall of the Nixon administration. Nixon’s humiliation was a cultural turning point. As a teenager I remember the glee with which many of my generation celebrated.

Rock and roll, popular fiction, movies, entertainment, and intellectual commentary reflected and contributed to a marked shift to Left in American politics in the ’60s and’70s. It was hip to be young and distrustful of older generations, institutions, and American heritage. A gulf separated those who knew the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War from those who protested the Vietnam war. For most of us during those times it was better to be guarded among casual acquaintance lest conversation devolve into viciousness.

Americans of that era had become deaf to opposing opinions, and blind to the good-hearted intentions of others whose experience had so profoundly and differently affected them. Scornful caricatures of standup comics were weapons in a cultural war. Patriotism was mocked. Societal trauma made us hate and demonize each other. How much division can a society bear? America’s leaders tested the limits of social cohesion during the Vietnam War.

The St. Croix Review was founded in 1968, amid the estrangement of the American Left and Right. The roots of The St. Croix Review are embedded in the soil of American goodness, decent civil liberties, respect for our neighbors and communities, economic liberty, a stout defense of American sovereignty, lawful order, personal self-reliance and individual initiative, the bedrock of motherhood, fatherhood, and family, honest and transparent government, and, most of all, the importance of personal integrity.

Let’s take stock of the malign influence that Leftwing ideology has imposed on American society since the Vietnam era.

On a podcast Megan Kelly revealed the contents of the writings of Audrey Hale, the 2023 Covenant School shooter. Hale murdered three nine-year-old students and three adults at the Covenant School. In her journals (that were kept from the public by the Nashville police for two years) Hale repeatedly confessed hatred for white Americans. Hale was obsessed with transgenderism. She wrote “Female pronouns make me like I want to die.” She considered herself and other murderers as “gods.” She thought of Tim McVeigh, Jim Jones, Jeffery Dahmer, and Dylan Klebold (one of the two Columbine school shooters) as “gods.” Hale regarded herself to be the reincarnated soul of Dylan Klebold. She wrote of Klebold, “My thoughts of depression are forever linked to his and my experience as well.”

Clearly Hale was hypnotized by Leftist identity politics. Her profound disturbance was coincident with the introduction of gender indoctrination into the curriculum of America’s public schools. It is difficult to imagine that the toxic brew of hatred and confusion that skewed Hale’s consciousness would have arisen without the impetus of Woke ideology.

Let’s take stock of the tendency toward political violence encouraged by Leftist rhetoric. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a nonprofit organization that reports on the spread of “ideologically motivated threats, disinformation, and misinformation across social media and physical spaces.” They “identify and forecast emerging threats in the era of information disorder.” They track “how viral social media narratives were legitimizing political violence, particularly in the aftermath of the United Healthcare CEO’s assassination.” The authors of reports write, “The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users.”

The reports note Leftist influence in a proposed California ballot measure named “the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act,” that celebrates the alleged leftist murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The ballot measure targets health insurance denials, one of Mangione’s reported motivations. Just days after the Luigi Mangione Act was filed in California a California man who was “angry with pharmacies” was arrested for the murder of a Walgreens employee. The victim, Erick Velazquez, was not a pharmacist but was a respected husband and father of two children.

M.D. Kittle writes for The Federalist. He reports that 55 percent of “self-identified leftists” say that killing President Trump is justifiable. Kittle cites a NCRI report:

“The unhinged left, fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and seething hatred for Elon Musk, is trending more violent, according to a new study that finds political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is ‘becoming increasingly normalized.’ . . .

“The report, produced by the Network of Contagion Research Institute in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, finds a broader ‘assassination culture’ appears to be ‘emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.’

“Less than a year after assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Trump and the literally explosive violence against Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles, it’s no secret that leftists are ratcheting up violent rhetoric and actions. The more troubling trend is that an ‘assassination culture’ isn’t just coming from the ‘fringe’ left.

“‘These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,’ states the report, titled, ‘Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.’”

The political rhetoric of Democratic politicians has poisoned the American people. President’s Biden’s use of the appellation “extreme Maga Republicans” has had an impact. The constant harangue and equation from multiple elected Democrats toward both Republican politicians and Republican voters with slurs and smears of “Hitler,” “Nazis,” and “fascists” has soured, embittered, and hardened the hearts and minds of American leftists.

Clearly the tenor of the mass media’s barrage of leftist narrative in the delivery of the daily news has had a profoundly negative effect on American society. The corporate media has turned broadcast and printed news into a daily attack in the style of a Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals attack. Every issue is fodder for the seizure of Leftist power. A relevant modern proverb is: The issue is not the issue; the issue is power. The broadcast news and the major newspapers of the ’60s and ’70s were dignified and restrained in comparison with the sly bile and pollution practiced by our current “journalists.”

I am a poet and I associate with various groups of poets in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Of the dozens of poets whom I know, all but one is on the political Left. They are vocally extreme in their rhetoric. There is an ignorance embedded in their opinions that appears to be insuperable. A pinprick of a counterargument would come against the iron bull of decades of propaganda. When I am with them, I am able to communicate in a light-hearted mien, in the ethereal realm that skillful poets are able to exploit. There is much to discuss apart from politics. I am able to listen to their rage against President Trump and be unaffected. I see their upside-down version of reality. I notice a certain coherence and predictability about them. I feel a sadness in my association with them because they will never know the best of me. I have prominent duties among them. I realize I have constructed a house of cards. If I expressed political opinions I would probably be ostracized. I don’t talk about politics, but I am not hiding either. I will play the role that God assigns for me when I am among them. I could intelligently explain my take on any issue that is likely to emerge in conversation. I would not be heard. I don’t believe them to be intentionally cruel people. They are products of the Vietnam War, and of the layers and layers of leftist media narrative, and of a community of like-minded individuals. They are cogs in the leftist machine. They have many worthy qualities but appeals to liberty would find no reception with them. They have been trained to be intolerant, but they cannot recognize their intolerance.

We good-hearted Americans who are frightened by America’s and Western Europe’s descent toward leftist totalitarianism must do our best to reach those people who are able to hear our message. We must hold to our positions and be eloquent and persistent in the defense of our ideals.

It is ironic that the elitist Left accuses the Right of being fascist, when it is the Left that is most fascistic. To accuse the Right of the very wickedness that they do is a devilish trick. Accusation and demonization are effective tools.

If America is to recover, we must focus and direct our message skillfully. We must free our schools from the malignant influence of leftist propaganda. We must propagate alternative media platforms. We must humble the bureaucracy. And we must support the broad swath of the current Trump agenda.

Once people learn to think like Marxists, with a vicious victim mentality, they are formed in concrete.     *