‘The Suicide Squad’: How Democrats keep blowing themselves up



Donald Trump, now in his second term, has executed a political masterstroke — cornering Democrats into the unpopular side of nearly every 80/20 issue. From transgender athletes in women’s sports and the DOGE to the airstrike on Iran’s nuclear sites, he’s boxed them in. But Trump isn’t the Democrats’ biggest threat. Their worst enemy is themselves — and the radical candidates they continue to put forward.

The truth is that the left has always flirted with the absurd. Leftists rant that the rich must “pay their fair share,” but can’t define what “fair” means. They champion equity over equality and preach that government handouts — not markets — will lift the poor and working class. This worldview teeters between naivete and madness.

The Democratic Party isn’t just drifting — it’s accelerating toward the cliff. And no one pushed the Democrats. They drove themselves.

Then came 2018, when “the Squad” stormed Congress and dragged the party from the edge of absurdity into full-blown lunacy.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — raised in a comfortable New York suburb — rebranded herself as “Alex from the block” in the Bronx. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota dismissed 9/11 as “some people did something” and still won a seat in Congress. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan was censured — by both parties — for chanting “from the river to the sea” after Hamas massacred Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. In 2020, Jamaal Bowman of New York joined their ranks and was later caught on video pulling a Capitol fire alarm to delay a budget vote. His excuse? He thought it would “unlock a door.”

Some Squad members have lost re-election bids, but the core group marches on, peddling the Green New Deal, defunding police, and attending Fighting Oligarchy rallies via private jet.

Meanwhile, Soros-backed prosecutors decriminalize shoplifting, eliminate cash bail, and release repeat offenders. These are not policy missteps — they are self-inflicted wounds. And Republicans couldn’t ask for better material.

Enter Zohran Mamdani — the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist running for New York City mayor. His platform makes Bernie Sanders look centrist.

Mamdani wants to defund police, make New York a sanctuary city, and jack up the minimum wage to $30 an hour. He calls for rent freezes, free buses, and city-run grocery stores — as if the Soviet model didn’t already prove that government-run markets lead to scarcity and dysfunction.

RELATED: Vance on Mamdani: ‘Who the hell does he think that he is?’

  Photo by Kenny Holston/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Even more alarming is his plan to “shift the tax burden” from homeowners in the outer boroughs to “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” That’s not policy — that’s race-based redistribution.

And his foreign policy? Mamdani wants to “globalize the intifada.” That’s a genocidal rallying cry, and New York’s Jewish community should treat it like the five-alarm fire it is.

So can the Democrats still correct course? Can the party of JFK and FDR find its footing again?

One glimmer of sanity remains: Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Despite his hoodie-and-shorts aesthetic, to say nothing of the stroke that nearly killed him in 2022, he has emerged as a lonely voice of reason. He has called out the party’s excesses. But will anyone listen? Or will the Democrats toss him aside for failing the purity test?

The Democratic Party isn’t just drifting — it’s accelerating toward the cliff. And no one pushed the Democrats. They drove themselves.

Voters loved the socialist slogans. Now comes the fine print.



Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo in last week’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary catapulted a full-bodied Democratic Socialist program onto the national marquee. In his midnight speech, he claimed, “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few.” His win marks Gotham’s sharpest left turn in a generation — and that’s saying something.

The recipients of his promise are slated to receive an economic makeover that treats prices as political failures. His platform freezes rents on more than 1 million apartments, builds 200,000 publicly financed “social housing” units, rolls out city-owned grocery stores, makes buses fare-free, and lifts the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, all bankrolled by roughly $10 billion in new corporate and millionaire taxes.

If Mamdani’s program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.

A week later, reality is beginning to set in.

Mamdani means what he says. On his watch, public safety would become a piggy bank. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Mamdani posted, “No, we want to defund the police.” He wasn’t being metaphorical. His current blueprint would shift billions from the NYPD into a new “Department of Community Safety” — even as felony assaults on seniors have doubled since 2019.

Mamdani’s program may feel aspirational to affluent progressives, yet to many New Yorkers it lands like an ultimatum.

Forty-two percent of renter households already spend more than 30% of their income on shelter; now they are told higher business taxes and a slimmer police presence are the price of utopia, which helps explain why tens of thousands of households making between $32,000 and $65,000 — the city’s economic backbone — have left for other states in just the past few years.

Picture a deli cashier in the Bronx. She’s not reading City Hall memos, but she feels the squeeze when rent rises and her boss mutters about new taxes. She doesn’t frame her frustration as a debate about “big government” — but she knows when it’s harder to get by and when it’s less safe walking home. The politics of the city aren’t abstract to her. They’re personal.

Adding insult to injury, the job Mamdani wants comes with a salary of roughly $258,750 a year — more than three times the median city household income — plus the chauffeurs, security details, and gilt-edged benefits package that accompany the office. Telling overtaxed commuters that their groceries will now be “public options” while banking a quarter-million dollars in guaranteed pay is the policy equivalent of riding past them in a limousine and rolling down the window just long enough to raise their rent.

Layer onto that record a set of statements many Jewish New Yorkers regard as outright hostility. Mamdani is one of the loudest champions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement; last year he pushed a bill to bar certain New York charities from sending money to Israeli causes and defended the chant “globalize the intifada,” drawing sharp rebukes from city rabbis. The day after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, he blamed the bloodshed on “apartheid” and “occupation.”

All this lands in a metropolis with the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel — about 1.4 million residents — whose synagogues, schools, and small businesses have weathered a steady rise in hate crimes. For them, a would-be mayor who treats Israel as a pariah and shrugs at chants of intifada isn’t dabbling in foreign policy; he’s telegraphing contempt for their safety and identity at home.

Republicans see an inadvertent gift. Mamdani’s New York will soon be measured against the lower-tax, police-friendly model many red states — especially my home, Florida — have advertised for years.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Program has mailed more than 7,800 after-tax checks of $5,000 to officers relocating from 49 states, including hundreds from New York precincts, while Florida touts a 50-year low in index-crime reports and unemployment below the national average. IRS data shows Florida netted 33,019 New York households in the latest year, with average adjusted gross income near $185,000.

Project those trend lines a few years and Mamdani’s New York grows grim: a shrunken police force responding to more 911 calls; fare-free buses draining MTA dollars and stranding riders; municipal groceries undercutting bodegas until subsidies vanish; office-tower vacancies sapping property tax receipts just as social housing bills come due. The skyline still gleams, but plywood fronts and “For Lease” placards scar street level. Meanwhile states that fund cops, respect paychecks, and let entrepreneurs stock the shelves siphon away residents and revenue.

RELATED: Don’t let rural America become the next New York City

  Terraxplorer via iStock/Getty Images

Republicans running in 2026 scarcely need to draft the attack ads, yet they must pair fiscal sobriety with moral urgency — protecting the vulnerable, rewarding work, and defending faith. Mamdani’s primary victory shows romantic egalitarianism still electrifies young voters; statistics alone won’t counter a pledge of universal child care and rent freezes. This indeed won’t be a case of “promises made, promises kept.”

If his program collapses under its own weight, the case for limited government will write itself in boarded-up windows and outbound moving vans.

Should the city somehow thrive — safer streets, balanced books, real wage gains — progressives will demand that Congress replicate Mamdani’s policies nationwide. That is federalism at its most honest: two competing philosophies running side by side under the same national sky, with citizens free to relocate from one laboratory to the other.

For now, the lab results favor the model that backs the blue, protects the paycheck, and keeps the ladder of opportunity in good repair. Voters — and U-Hauls — are already keeping score. By decade’s end, the scoreboard will show which vision truly loved New York’s working families and which merely loved the sound of its own ideals.

Blaze News original: 7 times violent crooks were released — sometimes with no bail — and soon were charged with more violence



Stories have flooded the news cycle in recent years about authorities releasing violent criminals from custody — sometimes with no bail and despite violent charges already on their records — after which they're soon charged with committing violent crimes again.

It's an issue that has many observers angry, frustrated, and fed up with woke politicians, district attorneys, judges, and social justice warriors who seem intent on keeping dangerous individuals out of jail and on streets and committing more violent crimes.

Just this month, a 30-year-old male allegedly punched a 9-year-old girl in the face while she was with her mother in the dining concourse of New York City's Grand Central Station.

WNBC-TV said the suspect got away before the Bronx girl was taken to the hospital, the station said.

Turns out just days before, cops charged the same suspect — later identified as Jean Carlos Zarzuela — reportedly for randomly punching a 54-year-old woman and breaking her nose inside Grand Central. But a source told WNBC-TV that while a judge set Zarzuela's bail at $2,500 cash — and Zarzuela went to jail — he went before a different judge soon after and was released.

Police arrested Zarzuela a few hours after the girl was punched, WNBC said. He was charged with assault, WPIX-TV said, adding that the MTA indicated additional charges are pending.

The girl suffered from dizziness and pain, WPIX reported, citing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. She's expected to recover, WPIX added.

 Man arrested for punching girl in Grand Central: MTAyoutu.be

“It doesn’t make any sense that this guy — who recently was released after being charged with randomly punching someone else and breaking that victim’s nose — should be back in a public space where he can attack others, especially children,” MTA Communications Director Tim Minton told WPIX. “The people responsible for the criminal justice system need to learn from this episode before more innocent people become victims.”

The following are similar recent examples:

Ex-con released with no bail after his arrest for domestic violence against estranged wife; the next day he allegedly shoots her to death in front of her children 


Adam Bennefield, 45, was charged with low-level misdemeanors in 2022 in connection with his alleged domestic violence against 30-year-old Keaira Bennefield — and the judge couldn't set bail, so he was released. Keaira Bennefield was so afraid of what might happen to her that she wore a bulletproof vest to drop her children off at school. A day later Adam Bennefield allegedly shot her to death in her car in front of her kids, ages 6 months to 9 years. The victim's mother said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's support of cashless bail led to her daughter's murder: "She should be charged for the crime. She's also responsible for the crime. She failed me. She let me down and my daughter down, and she needs to make a change with the bail reform."

Woman released on zero bail after allegedly ramming car into businesses; a week later she's charged with arson and attempted murder


Jacqueline Whatley, 36, was arrested last October after allegedly ramming a car into a Coffee Bean and a sushi restaurant in Los Feliz, California, KTTV-TV said. Police charged her with vandalism, which was eligible for no-cash bail, and she was released, the station said. About a week later, she faced attempted murder charges in connection with setting fires that destroyed a business, a home, and an occupied tent — and this time she was being held on $1 million bail, KTTV said.

Woman beats man with pole, released with no bail while deemed 'moderate risk'; days later she kills mother of 8 


Vanessa Harvey, 49, pleaded guilty in 2023 to voluntary manslaughter in the 2021 death of 42-year-old Machina Goodjoint, KLAS-TV reported, adding that two weeks before that crime Harvey beat her first victim — a man — with a metal pole. After the first attack, Harvey refused to appear for her probable cause hearing on a charge of battery resulting in substantial bodily harm, the station said. In the attack against Goodjoint, the victim's injuries were so severe that an officer reportedly believed Goodjoint was shot in the face. Harvey was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison and will be eligible for parole next year.

Thug reportedly released without bail after allegedly punching woman in face on NYC street — and despite suspect's 7 prior assault arrests


“He just punched me on the right side here, very strong,” Dulce Pichardo told WPIX-TV of the late March unprovoked attack in Brooklyn. “I was surprised. I said, ‘What’s going on? Why did you hit me? Why did you do it?’ I didn’t do anything. No reason to hit me." Officers arrested 33-year-old Franz Jeudy, WABC-TV reported. Jeudy was charged with third-degree assault — a misdemeanor, which means he wasn't bail-eligible — and he was released, the New York Post reported. The paper added that one of Jeudy's prior arrests took place in 2018 when he was charged with second-degree assault for an attack on a cop.

Thug arrested multiple times for assaults reportedly released from custody — then just 2 days later accused of brutal hatchet attack against elderly man


The suspect in a brutal hatchet attack against an elderly man last December reportedly was released from custody two days before the attack — and also had 19 bench warrants since 2012 and had been arrested for assaulting firefighters, health care workers, police officers, and strangers. Paleti Anikesi Veniale, 30, was charged with first-degree attempted murder, and prosecutors cited his extensive history of criminal violence when they asked for bail of $1 million.

Punk released with no bail after being charged with randomly attacking 2 men; a month later he's accused of punching 19-year-old female in face, breaking her nose


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CWB Chicago reported that after prosecutors charged Diashun Dixson with randomly attacking two men — one of them 64 years old — at the Chicago French Market in May 2023, a judge ordered Dixson to pay a $10,000 bail deposit. But the outlet said he couldn't post bail and stayed in jail until December when his attorney — citing the state's elimination of cash bail — filed a motion and got Dixson released. CWB Chicago said not even a month later Dixson was accused of randomly punching a 19-year-old female college student so hard in the face that her nose was fractured. The outlet said Dixson was soon back in jail.

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Illinois Cooks Up Cashless Bail And Discovers It’s A ‘Perfect Recipe For Lawlessness’

Critics of Illinois’ criminal justice system say it puts criminals above law enforcement and public safety.

Horowitz: Chicago releases the most violent offenders to commit the exact same crimes



What happens when you let career violent criminals out on little or no bail with no fear of punishment for violating their terms of release? In a dystopian hell like Chicago, that means an individual released after being charged with punching a woman in the face and kicking a cop in the groin will be rearrested for … punching a woman in the face and kicking a cop in the groin. Oh, and another sex offender released on charges of molesting multiple women will be rearrested for … molesting another woman!

At a time when the FBI and DHS are spying on political opponents with no criminal records as if they are violent criminals, known violent criminals are released to repeat the worst crimes again. Let’s meet James Killingsworth, a career criminal who was arrested right before Christmas 2020 for stealing a woman’s phone on a Chicago street and then kicking the arresting cop in the groin. The prosecution later linked him to a robbery a few days earlier in which he punched a woman in the face in broad daylight and stole her phone. One would think that aggravated battery of a peace officer, theft, attempted robbery, and aggravated battery in a public place would put him away for a while, but when he reported to prison on October 19, 2022, he was released on the same day because of good time credits and time served.

Fast-forward just six days later, and Killingsworth was arrested on October 25 for punching a woman at a transit station and then kicking the arresting officer in the groin, according to CWB Chicago. De ja vu! This case would be one for the books even if the system finally locked him up, but it gets worse. The Illinois Department of Corrections refused to charge him with a parole violation, and the judge released him on just $12,000 bail!

Contrast this with military veterans with no criminal records who are still serving two years pretrial without any chance for bail for charges that don’t even allege touching a police officer or punching someone in the face.

What about sexual assault? Surely the system would give those perps the “January 6 treatment,” right? Wrong! Meet David Buckner, the terror of Chicago transit, courtesy of CWB Chicago reporting:

In June, a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office refused to file felony charges against Buckner after two women accused him of licking, kissing, squeezing, and groping them on the Magnificent Mile. With felony charges denied, Chicago police had to charge Buckner with misdemeanor battery. He was released from jail a few days later to await trial.

On October 9, while he was still on bail for the June allegations, two more women accused Buckner of touching them inappropriately at the Roosevelt CTA station. He walked out of the local Chicago police station a few hours later on his own recognizance, charged only with misdemeanor battery again. Records that would show if prosecutors rejected felony charges for the new allegations have not been posted in public records.

Then, just before 2 p.m. Wednesday, while still on bail for the June and October cases, he allegedly assaulted an 18-year-old woman on the Loyola campus, not far from the Red Line station.

He grabbed the woman’s body and her left butt cheek, prosecutor Jeff Allen said. Once again, Buckner is only charged with a misdemeanor.

Despite the multiple bail violations and arrests for serious crimes, Judge Kelly McCarthy ordered Buckner to pay just a $5,000 deposit toward bail in the Loyola case and $3,000 in the June case until Buckner sees the judge overseeing that matter on Monday. It turns out that in 2017, he was accused by a list of women for grotesque sexual offenses in the subways. The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that prosecutors said Buckner admitted to “probably” molesting 75 women. Yet a week before Thanksgiving of last year, when he was charged for violating the terms of the sex offender registry, he was released on his own recognizance because of an insanity plea.

This is the two-tiered justice we have in America. This is why the streets are full of violent criminals who will commit endless violent crimes for years to come. Think about all the violent criminal who used to be locked up during the “tough on crime” era who are now out. Those people need to be behind bars.

This chart from the New York Times shows the dangers on the streets in one chart:

  

The Left is celebrating the fact that the black incarceration rate has been nearly cut in half over the past generation and are calling for even more prison releases. However, when you measure the body count of thousands of excess black homicide victims over the past few years, you realize that this is nothing to celebrate. The reality is that among the black population, unfortunately, are a disproportionate share of violent criminals, usually tied to gangs. They are not in prison at higher numbers because of low-level crimes or drug crimes, but for violent crimes. According to the FBI’s crime data explorer, roughly 60% of the homicide offenders in 2021 whose race was known were black.

Any effort to go soft on prison sentences of career criminals out of concern for black prison rates – a sentiment too many Republicans have bought into over the past decade – will necessarily result in harming black victims of crime more than anyone else. Almost 60% of the homicide victims in 2021 were also black.

It’s no longer enough for Republicans to run ads complaining about crime and promising to “fund the police.” They need to promise mandatory minimums for violent and repeat offenders, toughening penalties for bail, parole, and probation violations, targeting gangs, and a legitimate three-strikes-and-you’re-out law.

While one can debate the degree of punishment to mete out to lower-level criminals, the street crimes we are witnessing in America’s major cities are being committed by those whom both parties used to deem a threat and support taking off the streets. Yet now we live in a world where Democrat Governors like Kathy Hochul in New York don’t understand why it’s so important to lock these people up. Hopefully, Republicans have finally learned their lesson and will pursue criminal justice reform in the exact opposite way they did this past decade and save their desire for grace and leniency for those targeted for political crimes.

Horowitz: It’s the violent gun felons, stupid



We need not steal people’s guns without due process, as Joe Biden suggests, nor do we need to send in the National Guard to protect America’s cities, as Donald Trump recently suggested. What Chicago’s experience demonstrates is that we simply need to lock up the gun felons and career criminals who have already been found guilty through due process. It’s not so much about funding the police or drastic measures of having the military occupy American cities, but about simply locking up the criminals.

Americans watched with horror the viral video of a 16-year-old with a gun bust under his belt tussling violently with a NYPD officer on one of Manhattan’s infamous subways. It turns out that the boy had previously been arrested April 12 in Brooklyn for allegedly carrying a loaded gun and then again just two weeks ago for a robbery, but the details of the cases are sealed. Yet despite the history of gun violations and violence, the suspect was released on his own recognizance a day after the struggle with police.

This case embodies the source of the violence in cities like New York and Chicago. The culprits all have endless violations of bail terms and parole, and numerous violent crimes and gun felonies piling up on each other before the original case is disposed of in court, yet they continue to be released, especially in the case of the growing juvenile violence. Any other policy thrown into the public policy discussion other than tougher sentencing, pre-release holding, and tougher parole conditions is a distraction. You can fund police all day long, but if the criminals are not punished, they will just fight with the police knowing there are no repercussions.

“He’s charged with all those things, and now in his third arrest, he’s released again,” a high-ranking police source told the New York Post of the subway brawler. “What does it take to get locked up here?” This incident occurred a week after the man who attacked New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was freed within a few hours on cashless bail.

Democrats wax poetic about gun violence, but then when they actually catch gun felons illegally possessing guns and committing more crimes in violation of their previous release or parole, they still offer them low bail. A Chicago judge recently released 32-year-old Clear Huddleston on a $3,000 cash deposit after he was caught illegally possessing a gun and drugs, despite his criminal history, which included robbery in 2008, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in 2012, theft in 2016, and armed robbery in 2016. The way Democrats speak of guns, you would think they’d offer the death penalty to someone caught illegally possessing a gun as a career violent felon, yet even career violent gun felons and robbers are easily released and given multiple “chances.”

Then there is the case of Steven Kelsey, a Chicago man on parole for shooting a man while on electronic monitoring for possessing a firearm while out on parole. So he already had his second chance, despite actually shooting someone with a gun. Now he has been arrested for, you guessed it, an armed carjacking. Before the July 12 carjacking, Kelsey was convicted of illegal gun possession and aggravated discharge of a firearm in a 2015 case that started as an attempted murder case. This is after having been charged as a juvenile twice for possessing stolen motor vehicles and once for aggravated vehicular hijacking. Yet he didn’t serve much time, and shortly after he was paroled for the shooting, Kelsey was arrested again and charged with … you guessed it … unlawful use of a weapon by a felon on parole. But he was released in June of last year with just a $10,000 bail deposit on electronic monitoring, which, as always turned out to be worthless in deterring him from the armed carjacking earlier this month.

This is the story of nearly every carjacker and murderer in every major city, and it’s happening in red states too. Earlier this month, a 15-year old carjacker in Memphis was released from some nebulous juvenile program on electronic monitoring and is now accused of killing a woman in another carjacking, despite wearing an ankle monitor.

Carjackings are out of control as a result of repeat juvenile offenders never getting punished. This phenomenon fueled more than 1,900 carjackings in Chicago last year. At some point, youthful indiscretion should not be an excuse for serious, repeat offenses.

If we only deterred and punished the known career criminals, we’d stop most violent crime. The debate over police funding, while important, is largely a distraction to the main issue. Republicans, including President Trump, bought into the over-incarceration argument last decade, which led to an acceleration in de-incarceration of the most dangerous career criminals. Ironically, Trump himself made the comments about deploying the National Guard to suppress riots at the “America First Policy Institute,” which is run by his former domestic policy adviser Brooke Rollins, who convinced Trump to embrace the jailbreak agenda and also dissuaded him from actually deploying the National Guard during the BLM riots of May-June 2020.

It’s very easy for Republicans to broadly inveigh against rising crime under Democrats. But unless they commit to shedding their ties to the pro-jailbreak, Koch-backed organizations pushing de-incarceration, they will continue managing a rise in crime.

Drug trafficking suspects busted with 151,000 fentanyl pills skip California court date after released on cashless bail



Two men accused of trafficking a massive amount of fentanyl pills were a no-show for their California court date after they were released on cashless bail last month.

On June 24, California Highway Patrol officers pulled over a vehicle in Tulare County. The Tulare County High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Unit (HIDTA) assisted in the traffic stop since the drugs were reportedly concealed in a hidden compartment. Authorities found 151,000 fentanyl pills in the vehicle as well as two kilograms of cocaine. Authorities estimate that the fentanyl pills have a street value of approximately $750,000.

Jose Zendejas, 25, and Benito Madrigal, 19, were arrested as suspects in the drug trafficking scheme.

Their bail was initially set at $1 million each. However, less than 24 hours after their arrest for the deadly drugs, a judge ruled that the suspects were to be released from custody on cashless bail. After pressure from the county's probation department, the judge deemed that the suspects – both from Washington state – were "low risk" and should be released "on their own recognizance."

The Tulare County district attorney's office and the Tulare County sheriff’s office said they were not consulted regarding the release of the suspects.

The fentanyl-trafficking suspects failed to show up for their court date on Thursday. They skipped their arraignments at the Tulare County Courthouse in central California.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told Fox News, "I didn't learn about the order until it was far too late. I couldn't believe we had 150,000 fentanyl pills — one of the most dangerous epidemics facing our nation today — with people in custody that we may potentially be able to impact the future of this type of drug trafficking organization… and we let them go."

Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward told Fox News, "Although there is a need for a pre-trial release program, to do it covertly in the middle of the night in a very nontransparent matter is extremely dangerous. What we discovered here was that it was occurring based on a decision without any foundation of the facts of the case. And I think going forward, I think everyone is realizing that’s a mistake and should not continue."

"The problem is once again the legislature and the state of California are trying to go down some social experiment born on the back of law-abiding citizens," Ward added. "I go out on a limb and say that had these defendants been subject to the million bail that was in place when they were arrested, and they made bail based on that amount, they would have some skin in the game, some financial obligation and motivation to return to court."

On June 30, Tulare County Superior Court Judge Nathan Leedy rescinded the suspect's release order and issued arrest warrants for the men. The judge also set bail at $2.15 million.

Zendejas and Madrigal were charged with the sale, transportation, or offer to sell a controlled substance — fentanyl; the transport for sale to a non-contiguous county of cocaine with the special charge that the weight exceeded one kilogram; and false compartment activity.

The suspects both face up to 14 years in state prison if convicted on all charges.