A Portland trauma hospital’s emergency helicopters were forced to divert, significantly adding to their travel time, when local anarchists threatened to “ground” aircraft with laser lights — a federal crime.
Oregon Health & Science University told KGW that several air ambulance vendors refused to land on the hospital’s helipad Saturday evening because of the planned attack. The threatened interruption to air travel added 45 to 60 minutes of travel time for these emergency helicopters.
'If enough lasers are pointed at the aircraft, we think it will not be able to safely stay in the air for long enough to continue to pinpoint the source for law enforcement, and numbers will make it difficult to focus on a single person.'
“For most patients, that will be an acceptable delay. However, for some sensitive situations, such as unstable trauma patients, STEMIs and strokes, the delay could have real impacts,” OHSU stated.
Rose City Counter-Info, an online anonymous anarchist blog based in Portland, shared a flyer advertising the protest.
“You’re invited: Laser tag!” it read. “Every night for weeks, we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us.”
The flyer encouraged readers to “mask up” and “go to a park, a field, or some other public place” to point lasers at “cop copter[s]” at 9 p.m. on Saturday.
RELATED: If Trump labels Antifa a foreign terrorist organization, here's what he can do next
“It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!” the flyer stated.
The blog post provided further instructions on how to evade law enforcement while engaging in this illegal act.
“If enough lasers are pointed at the aircraft, we think it will not be able to safely stay in the air for long enough to continue to pinpoint the source for law enforcement, and numbers will make it difficult to focus on a single person,” the blog post read. “Be ready to dispose of the laser if you need to — wear gloves and clean it with alcohol in case you have to toss it in a hurry. Consider taking precautions to keep DNA off of it as well.”
The Portland Police Bureau told Fox News that no laser incidents were reported that evening. However, the department said it did arrest one individual earlier in the week.
The Department of Homeland Security vowed to stop “Antifa domestic terrorists” from taking over cities.
“We will bust their networks and bring every one of them to justice,” the DHS wrote in a post on X.
The website that shared the flyer has also recently doxxed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, posting photos of alleged officers and their alleged home addresses.
“We put together some posters for people to slap up around town. Name and shame these Gestapo clowns. No peace. No safety. Not welcome in our town,” one blog post stated.
With no end in sight to the government shutdown, President Donald Trump's administration is putting Democrats in an unenviable position.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced Friday that the administration has officially begun issuing reduction in force notices, laying off over 4,200 government workers across several key departments, like Treasury, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. As the government approaches its third week of the shutdown, Democrats are left weighing their options.
'The easiest way to stop this is for five [Democrats] to come to their senses.'
These layoffs come as no surprise. Vought previously threatened Democrats with mass layoffs just days before the September 30 funding deadline. Still, Democrats are feigning surprise.
"Here's what's worse: Republicans would rather see thousands of Americans lose their jobs than sit down and negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. "The way forward is simple: Stop the attacks, come to the table, negotiate, and reopen the government. Until Republicans get serious, they own this — every job lost, every family hurt, every service gutted is because of their decisions.”
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Democrats blocked the Republican-led funding bill that would have kept the government open and operating at virtually the same funding levels.The GOP's bill was a simple, clean, 90-page continuing resolution with no partisan anomalies, save a bipartisan line item that would boost security funds for lawmakers following Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Rather than voting alongside Republicans to keep the government open, Democrats decided to introduce their own $1.5 trillion spending bill that would reverse major legislative accomplishments achieved in Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill. Democrats also insisted on immediately renegotiating healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, though these aren't set to expire until the end of the year.
Democrats are in the minority in both the House and the Senate.
RELATED: White House deploys nuclear option amid Democrat-induced shutdown stalemate
Senate Democrats have stubbornly voted no over a half dozen times on reopening the government. One senior Democratic aide told CNN that the party will not concede short of "planes falling out of the sky."
"The pressure thus far hasn't moved them at all," Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Blaze News during a press call hosted by the Republican Study Committee. "They seem to be enjoying it."
"I don't think anybody in the White House takes any pleasure in this at all," Johnson told Blaze News. "I've spoken to the president about this myself. Of course, I've spoken to Russell Vought as well. They're in an unenviable position."
"The easiest way to stop this is for five [Democrats] to come to their senses in the Senate and join Republicans to reopen the government."
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer against an illegal alien who killed a college student in a hit-and-run accident and received a light prison sentence, Blaze News has exclusively learned.
'This monster should never have been in our country and has had a final order of removal since 2018.'
On April 2, Rosali I. Fernandez-Cruz, a 24-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, was driving his pickup truck when he struck and killed Nathaniel Baker, a 21-year-old University of South Carolina student, who was riding his motorcycle in Richland County, South Carolina.
Fernandez-Cruz, who illegally entered the U.S. through the Mexico border in December 2016, fled the scene of the crash without attempting to administer aid.
Three of the four charges against Fernandez-Cruz were ultimately dropped, including failure to render aid, failure to yield right of way, and driving without a license.
He pleaded guilty to hit-and-run resulting in death and was sentenced to just one year in prison. He was also given credit for 131 days of time served.
Fernandez-Cruz's scheduled release is set for March 2026.
RELATED: Inside the Portland ICE facility under siege by Antifa extremists
A Department of Homeland Security press release revealed that ICE has lodged a detainer against Fernandez-Cruz to ensure that he is deported following the completion of his prison sentence.
An immigration judge issued a final order of removal in 2018.
"21-year-old USC student Nathaniel 'Nate' Baker was driving a motorcycle when he was hit by a truck driver who fled the scene," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated. "The hit-and-run driver, Rosali Isaac Fernandez-Cruz, was in our country illegally and received just one year in prison for taking Nate's precious life. ICE lodged a detainer to ensure as soon as this killer completes his one-year prison sentence that ICE is notified to arrest him and get him OUT of our country."
"Nathaniel was a 21-year-old college student with his whole life in front of him. This monster should never have been in our country and has had a final order of removal since 2018," McLaughlin added.
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Over the weekend, country music star Zach Bryan posted a song clip to his Instagram with the caption "the fading of the red white and blue." Since then, Bryan has faced a wave of backlash over some of his apparently "anti-ICE" lyrics, but one of the best responses came from the Department of Homeland Security.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security's X account posted a compilation video of law enforcement with one of Zach Bryan's more famous songs playing over it.
'When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits on both sides of the aisle.'
The caption of the post reads, "We’re having an All Night Revival."
The video depicts several scenes of arrests by law enforcement, riot control, and even a clip of the commander at large of the U.S. Border Patrol, Chief Gregory Bovino, who recently allegedly he had a murder hit put on his head by a Latin Kings gang member.
RELATED: Country singer Zach Bryan gets nailed with backlash over anti-ICE song
Zach Bryan's song "Revival" plays over the DHS video. "Revival" has over 390 million plays on Spotify and is among Bryan's top 10 songs.
The lyrics from the new melancholy song clip mention ICE while suggesting the slow decline of America.
"ICE is gonna come bust down your door," it reads. "Try to build a house / no one builds no more."
The lyrics end, "Got some bad news / the fading of the red, white, and blue.”
Hours after the DHS video dropped on Tuesday, Bryan posted an explanation on his Instagram story: "To all those disappointed in me on either side of whatever you believe in just know I'm trying my best too and we all say things that are misconstrued sometimes."
He suggested that there is more context in the full song: "When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits on both sides of the aisle."
He has not given any indication of the planned timing for the song's release.
Blaze News made multiple attempts to contact Zach Bryan and his management team for comment but was ultimately unsuccessful.
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Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas is doing his part to ramp up deportation efforts across the country.
Gill introduced landmark legislation on Wednesday that would effectively close loopholes and expand expedited removal authority to cover violent criminal aliens, according to bill text obtained exclusively by Blaze News. The bill also mandates the detention and expedited removal of violent criminals, gang members, and terrorists while also ensuring they are unable to abuse asylum protections.
'Democrat leaders invited them to invade our county en masse.'
The current law primarily limits expedited removal to migrants who recently crossed within 100 miles of the border and within 14 days of entry. Because of existing loopholes and procedures, criminal aliens are often sorted into slower and more standard removal proceedings.
In contrast, Gill's legislation addresses the removal of criminal aliens with urgency.
RELATED: Inside the Portland ICE facility under siege by Antifa extremists
"Our number one priority should be to protect American communities," Gill told Blaze News. "America should never be a safe haven for gang members, terrorists, or violent offenders."
"Yet, Democrat leaders invited them to invade our county en masse," Gill added. "Serious crimes require decisive consequences. My bill backs President Trump's efforts to capture and deport violent illegal aliens quickly at the behest of Americans across the nation who want their families to thrive in a safe society."
RELATED: Federal agents clash with mob of Antifa-fueled, anti-ICE protesters in Portland
Over the course of President Joe Biden's administration, there were over 10 million migrant encounters in the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, migrant encounters have plummeted to historic lows, with illegal crossings across the United States-Mexico border dropping to the lowest levels in over half a century. Gill indicated his legislation would continue this trend and help codify Trump's immigration policy.
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President Donald Trump has finally named the enemy: Mexican drug cartels. Declaring them unlawful combatants and recognizing a “non-international armed conflict” marks one of the most consequential national security shifts in modern history.
For decades, Washington treated cartel violence as a crime — a problem for prosecutors, not generals. Indictments were filed, assets seized, and sanctions imposed. But the cartels fought a different kind of war, one that combined terror, intelligence, and territorial control. Calling it “crime” guaranteed defeat.
We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, Mexico ranks among the world’s most violent conflict zones — behind only Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria. It is also the second-most dangerous country for civilians. Those numbers are not from a failed state overseas. They come from our southern border, where cartel wars spill into American communities daily.
For decades, federal authorities insisted on using a law-enforcement lens. Agencies operated under Title 21, Title 50, and limited “detect and monitor” authorities. They punished crimes but never broke campaigns. The narrow scope bred strategic blindness. While U.S. prosecutors filed indictments and built cases, cartels corrupted institutions, coerced populations, and built empires.
As the Marine Corps teaches: How you define the environment determines how you operate in it. We refused to define the cartels as belligerents — and fought the wrong fight.
By every operational measure, cartels are hybrid threats. They control territory, command loyalty through terror, and run parallel governments. They tax, adjudicate, and even “protect” local populations. Their power rests on corruption and espionage: bribing officials, infiltrating agencies, and compromising law enforcement through human networks that resemble intelligence tradecraft.
Cartels operate across land, air, maritime, subterranean, cyber, and electromagnetic domains. They deploy drones, tunnels, jammers, and encrypted systems. They are multi-domain actors running hybrid campaigns.
Cartels don’t just smuggle — they destabilize. Mass migration has become a weapon of war: overwhelming institutions, hiding operatives, and masking foreign infiltration. Millions of illegal entrants from more than 170 nations have crossed under cartel supervision. The intent is not just profit. It’s demographic disruption.
Under federal law, terrorism includes violence intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence government policy.” By that definition, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation qualify as terrorist organizations.
At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, I have testified before the Texas legislature and the U.S. Congress, warning that Mexico’s cartel conflict meets the Geneva Convention’s definition of a “non-international armed conflict.”
I described cartels as hybrid insurgents — foreign terrorist organizations that combine paramilitary violence, illicit economies, and political corruption to dominate populations. In March 2025 testimony, I stated plainly:
Mexico today is more accurately described as a state where governance has collapsed in key regions and foreign terrorist organizations dominate political and economic life, much like Afghanistan.
The president’s declaration confirms what many of us have argued for years: This is not a border problem — it is a war of sovereignty.
Cartel operations now span 65 countries. Chinese networks provide chemical precursors and launder money. Hezbollah and Iranian agents exploit the same smuggling corridors. Russia and Venezuela supply logistics and protection. Europol has confirmed joint cartel-European production of methamphetamine and cocaine. This is global insurgency — hybrid warfare waged through proxies.
The Western Hemisphere’s stability now hangs on whether the United States accepts that this is a war, not a criminal nuisance.
America has seen this pattern before. In Afghanistan, we failed not because we lacked strength but because we enabled corruption. We funded partners already captured by our enemies. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction documented how U.S. aid sustained the very system it sought to reform.
The parallels with Mexico and Venezuela are striking. Elements of their governments shelter cartels through impunity and contracts. Continuing to fund or legitimize such partners would repeat the Afghan mistake — this time on our own doorstep.
Trump’s declaration resets U.S. strategy. Recognizing cartels as unlawful combatants unlocks interagency coordination — treasury targeting financial networks, the IRS auditing tax-exempt fronts, and the Justice Department prosecuting to the “maximum extent permissible by law.” It is a full-spectrum approach that finally matches the enemy’s scale.
RELATED: Latin American leaders react to report that Trump will use US military against cartels
The new framework clarifies rules of engagement and intelligence sharing. We can now strike at the networks themselves, not just their accountants.
The cartels serve as convenient cutouts for America’s adversaries. China supplies chemicals, Iran and Hezbollah move cargo, Russia and Venezuela launder proceeds. These regimes use cartels as proxy forces — deniable, flexible, and brutal. The Western Hemisphere’s stability now hangs on whether the United States accepts that this is a war, not a criminal nuisance.
With this declaration, Trump restores the Reagan principle: peace through strength. As Secretary of War Pete Hegseth put it last week, “Our number-one job is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place.” Matching threats with capabilities sends a message not just to cartels, but to the nations behind them: Challenge us, and you will lose.
To borrow Hegseth’s phrasing: “Should our enemies choose foolishly to test us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies: FAFO.”
The war has been declared. The only question now is whether America has the will to win it. State legislatures, Congress, and the public must rally behind this strategy. Half-measures have failed. The moment demands unity, clarity, and resolve.
America is under attack. The commander in chief has drawn the line. Now the nation must stand behind it — and fight to victory.
The United States faces an existential threat from the accelerating military power of communist China — a buildup fueled by decades of massive economic expansion. If America intends to counter Beijing’s ambitions, it must grow faster, leaner, and more efficient. Economic strength is national security.
The ongoing government shutdown may not be popular, but it gives President Trump a rare opportunity to make good on his campaign pledge to drain — and redesign — “the swamp.” Streamlining the federal government isn’t just good politics. It’s a matter of survival.
A government that builds wealth rather than expands debt can out-produce China, sustain deterrence, and restore the American ideal of self-government.
George Washington ran the nation with four Cabinet departments: war, treasury, state, and the attorney general. The Department of the Interior came later, followed by the Department of Agriculture, added by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 when America was an agrarian power.
The modern Cabinet, by contrast, is a bureaucratic junkyard built more in reaction to political problems than by design. The Labor Department was carved from the Commerce Department to appease the unions. Lyndon Johnson invented the Department of Transportation. Jimmy Carter established the Department of Energy in response to the Arab oil embargo. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence emerged after 9/11.
The result is a patchwork of agencies wired together with duct tape, overlap, and patronage. A government designed for crisis management has become a permanent crisis unto itself.
A return to first principles starts with a single question: How can we accelerate American productivity?
The answer: consolidate. Merge the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, and Energy into a Department of National Economy. One Cabinet secretary, five undersecretaries, one mission: to expand the flow of goods and services that generate national wealth.
The new department’s motto should be a straightforward question: What did your enterprise do today to increase the wealth of the United States?
Fewer bureaucracies mean fewer fiefdoms, less redundancy, and enormous cost savings. Synergy replaces stovepipes. The government’s economic engine becomes a single machine instead of six competing engines running on taxpayer fuel.
Homeland Security should be absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard, which already functions as a paramilitary force with both military and police authority, much like Italy’s Carabinieri. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, DHS personnel would share discipline, training, and accountability.
FEMA would cease to be a dumping ground for political hacks. Any discrimination in disaster aid — such as punishing Trump voters — would trigger a court-martial.
The Secret Service would focus solely on protective duties, handing its financial-crime work to the FBI. The secretary of the Coast Guard would gain a seat in the Cabinet.
The Office of Director of National Intelligence should be re-established as the Office of Strategic Services, commanded by a figure in the tradition of Major General “Wild Bill” Donovan. Elements of U.S. Special Operations Command would be seconded to the new OSS, reviving its World War II lineage.
All intelligence agencies — CIA, DIA, FBI, the State Department, DEA, and the service branches — should share common foundational training. The current decline in discipline and capability at the National Intelligence University, worsened by the DEI policies of its leadership, demands urgent correction. Diversity cannot come at the expense of competence.
RELATED: Memo to Hegseth: Our military’s problem isn’t only fitness. It’s bad education.
At the Department of Justice, dissolve the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Shift alcohol and tobacco oversight to the DEA, firearms and explosives to the U.S. Marshals.
Let the DEA also absorb the Food and Drug Administration, which would become its research and standards division.
Return the FBI to pure investigation — armed but without arrest powers. Enforcement should rest with the U.S. Marshals. Counterintelligence would move to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, reinforced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The IRS should be dismantled and replaced with a small agency built around a flat-tax model such as the Hall-Rabushka plan.
Move the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to Homeland Security. Send its Office of Climate Change and Health Equity to NOAA — or eliminate it entirely.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, expand the inspector general’s office tenfold and pay bonuses for rooting out fraud.
The Pentagon needs its own overhaul. Because of China’s rapid military buildup, the Air Force’s Global Strike Command should be separated from U.S. Strategic Command and report directly to the secretary of war and the president under its historic name — Strategic Air Command.
Submarines and silos are invisible; bombers are not. Deterrence depends on visibility. A line of B-1s, B-2s, B-52s, and 100 new B-21 Raider stealth bombers, all bearing the mailed-fist insignia of the old SAC, would send an unmistakable message to Beijing.
With Trump back in the White House, this moment is ripe for radical efficiency. A government that builds wealth rather than expands debt can out-produce China, sustain deterrence, and restore the American ideal of self-government.
George Washington’s government fit inside a single carriage. We won’t return to that scale — but we can rediscover that spirit. A lean, unified, strategically organized government would make wealth creation easier, limit bureaucratic overreach, and preserve the republic for the long fight ahead.
Now is the time to put an end to mystery ballot deliveries in Amazon boxes by enacting voter ID in Maine. Real democracy requires trustworthy elections, and trustworthy elections require voter ID.
'Our officers continue to risk their lives every day to arrest criminal illegal aliens despite not getting paid,' said DHS's Tricia McLaughlin.
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