MOVIE – GRINDING AMERICA DOWN
January 12, 2026
I have sent this movie out before but it becomes more relevant with each passing year. NancyMOVIE – GRINDING AMERICA DOWNMar 18, 2023
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US USED POWERFUL NEW MYSTERY WEAPON
January 12, 2026
Very important information Nancy
US used powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees during Maduro raid: witness account
By Caitlin Doornbos January 10, 2026WASHINGTON — The US used a powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood, during the daring raid to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro, according to a witness account posted Saturday on X by the White House press secretary.
In a jaw-dropping interview, the guard described how American forces wiped out hundreds of fighters without losing a single soldier, using technology unlike anything he has ever seen — or heard.
“We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation,” the guard said. “The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.”
Moments later, a handful of helicopters appeared — “barely eight,” by his count — deploying what he estimated were just 20 US troops into the area.
But those few men, he said, came armed with something far more powerful than guns.
“They were technologically very advanced,” the guard recalled. “They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.”
What ensued, he said, was not a battle but a slaughter.
“We were hundreds, but we had no chance,” he said. “They were shooting with such precision and speed; it felt like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute.”
Then came the weapon that still haunts him.
“At one point, they launched something; I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. “It was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside.”
The effects were immediate and horrific.
“We all started bleeding from the nose,” he said. “Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon — or whatever it was.”
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CHINA, RUSSIA AIR DEFENSES FAULTED IN VENEZUELA
January 10, 2026
China, Russia air defenses faulted in Venezuela
– The Washington Times –
Among the major military failures exposed during the U.S. raid against Venezuela was the inability of a high-technology Chinese radar system to operate.
Extensive Russia anti-aircraft missiles and radar also were rendered useless.
The Chinese radar system in question is the JY-27A system that Beijing sold to Caracas and markets elsewhere as capable of detecting low-observable aircraft. This is a key sensor capability the Chinese military wants for use in countering F-35 and F-22 stealth jets and B-2 and future B-21 stealth bombers in any future conflict with the U.S.
However, U.S. military forces on Saturday demonstrated highly effective mission SEAD — suppression of enemy air defenses — in the opening minutes of the lightning-fast raid. Forces knocked out both the Chinese radar and extensive Russian air defense missile systems.
Asked about the failure of the Chinese equipment in Venezuela, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian appeared temporarily at a loss for words before declining to address the issue.
“China firmly supports Latin America and the Caribbean region’s status as a Zone of Peace,” Mr. Lin said Monday in Beijing in response to a Japanese reporter who asked why Chinese military equipment appeared to be “of little practical use” during the raid.
The Y-27A is a long-range air surveillance and guidance radar the Chinese claim is resistant to jamming while being highly reliable and mobile. The Very High Frequency radar uses an active phased array antenna.
Its manufacturer, the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, has said the radar can detect stealth aircraft like the F-22 up to 310 miles away.
Details on exactly how the Venezuelan military’s Chinese and Russian air defenses were rendered useless has not been made public.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters the operation involved “meticulous” planning and execution by air, ground, space and naval forces.
As U.S. warplanes approached Venezuelan shores, the joint forces began “layering different effects” from space, cyberspace and intelligence units, he said.
“The force included F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, EA-18s, E-2s, B-1 bombers, and other support aircraft, as well as numerous remotely piloted drones,” Gen. Caine said, noting that the early strikes dismantled and disabled air defenses allowing special operations commandos to enter without resistance on helicopters.
The EA-18 “Growlers” were reportedly key electronic jamming and communications systems used in the SEAD mission.
According to online military analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera, the Maduro government spent about $2 billion on Russian S-300 air defense missiles along with support radar and communications that were linked to the Chinese JY-27A system.
Moscow also supplied the Pantsir-S1, a gun-missile hybrid weapon engineered to knock out drones and low-flying helicopters — like those that penetrated Venezuelan airspace during the raid.
“None of them fired. Not one,” Mr. Perera stated on Substack.
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ILHAN OMAR CAUGHT FUNNELING $1M TO FAKE SUBSTANCE ABUSE CLINIC
January 9, 2026
CLICK ON THE LINK TO VIEW THE VIDEO
BUSTED: Ilhan Omar Caught Trying to Funnel $1M to a “Substance Abuse Clinic” Operating Out of a Restaurant Run by Three People at the Same Address — GOP TORPEDOES the Earmark
IRAN – ‘ALL ARE IN THE STREETS’
January 9, 2026
‘All are in the streets’: Iranians defiant as protests grow
AFP Bureaus
Fri, January 9, 2026
Demonstrators chanted ‘death to the dictator’ as they marched in the Iranian capital Tehran (-)
(-/UGC/AFP)
Tear gas burning his eyes, his voice hoarse from shouting anti-government slogans as cars honked around him, Majid joined crowds of Iranians taking to the streets in defiance of a crackdown on a swelling protest movement.
He used a pseudonym for security reasons and like all those who spoke about the protests was reached by AFP journalists outside Iran.
Majid described how he rallied with hundreds of others in the streets of eastern Mashhad on Wednesday night, even as police tried to disperse the crowd that nonetheless kept reforming.
“Police are targeting people with pellets, tear gas and shotguns,” Majid said.
“At first, people dispersed, but they gathered again,” rallying in the streets until the early hours of the morning.
“We know that if we go out there, we might not survive, but we are going and we will go out there to have a better future,” he said.
he demonstrations sparked in late December by anger over the rising cost of living and a currency nosedive have spread nationwide, their numbers — and death toll — growing.
Protesters filled the streets of the capital Tehran and other cities on Thursday night, despite a crackdown leaving dozens killed by security, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
Local media and official statements have reported at least 21 people, including security forces, killed since the unrest began, according to an AFP tally.
Violent crackdowns accompanied the last mass protests to sweep Iran in 2022-2023 sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.
Majid, a mobile shopkeeper in his thirties, said this time felt different.
“During these protests, even those people or those classes that had never felt the pressure before are now under pressure,” he said.
“You can see 50-year-old women, I saw someone who used to collect garbage on the streets chanting slogans along with shopkeepers. Young, old, men, women, all are in the streets.”
This wave of protests has hit as the clerical authorities under the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are already battling an economic crisis after years of sanctions and recovering from the June war against Israel.
“This is going to be the last fight against the government,” Majid said, though he’s uncertain of what would take the Islamic republic’s place.
“Right now, we just want to get rid of this bloody government because no matter who comes to rule, it won’t be as bloody as them.”
Another shop owner in Kermanshah in western Iran, which has seen intense protest activity, shuttered his store as part of a strike called in protest on Thursday.
The 43-year-old said he had taken part in every protest since 2009, when mass demonstrations flooded the streets after disputed elections.
But this one felt different from previous movements, because “people’s economic situation is heading towards complete collapse and life is no longer as it once was”.
“No matter how hard we work, we cannot keep up with the inflation for which the regime is responsible,” he told AFP via messaging app, saying protesters wanted “radical change in Iran”.
“Although I have a relatively good job, our lives have been severely affected this year by these economic conditions. We want a free and democratic Iran, and a free Kurdistan.”
nother merchant in Saqqez in Kurdistan province said he expected “more intense and widespread waves of protests in the coming days in Kurdish cities”, echoing other Iranians.
– ‘We stay alive’ –
One Tehran resident said she and neighbours had been shouting slogans from their windows at night — something she did for months during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022.
But, she said, now the “level of dissatisfaction is higher than ever”.
And while President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for “restraint” and announced measures to try to address grievances, “the issue for us is the end of the regime, and nothing else is satisfactory”, she said.
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EUROPE PRETENDS TO OWN GREENLAND
January 8, 2026
If you would like to listen to the article and view the video, please click on the link. NancyEUROPE PRETENDS TO OWN GREENLANDAmericans already defend Greenland. Pretending that it somehow belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark is petty narcissism.J.B Shurk January 8, 2026The most detestable thing about European-constructed “globalism” is its pretense. It pretends that man-made “climate change” will kill everyone unless we allow bureaucratic busybodies to regulate all economic exchange. It pretends that Russia is about to conquer all of Europe, even though all of Europe has been mocking Russia as a third-world paper tiger for the last thirty years. It pretends that the mass invasion of foreigners from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is completely natural, impossible to prevent, and that acceptance and toleration is the “humanitarian” thing to do. It pretends that its native citizens are “racists” for wishing to preserve their own cultures in their own lands. Even while it welcomes Islamic civilizational conquest throughout the continent, European “globalism” pretends that its mangled, mismanaged, and misremembered civilization remains the central and paramount expression of enlightened progress in the world.To outsiders not imbued with a sense of European entitlement or burdened by Europe’s policy delusions, Europe is a mess. It is presently reconstituting itself into a self-hating-Islamocentric-parasitically-pluralistic-historically-illiterate morass of cultural meaninglessness. Europe’s movies and television shows regularly bowdlerize history by removing native Europeans from ancient tales. Europe’s suicide will be complete when every actor is non-white and every storyline reinforces the narrative that Muslims settled all the lands from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. These multicultural historical revisions are preposterous. Yet when native Brits point out that there were no African Celts during the time of Caesar’s invasion or Pakistani lords in the royal courts of the Middle Ages, the dis-United Kingdom sends social media “thought police” to harass and legally threaten anyone unwilling to pretend that history is offensive and must therefore be rewritten.In matters of personal defense, Europe does nothing but pretend. Big, bad French president Emmanuel Macron, seriously terrifying U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer, and king kraut German chancellor Friedrich Merz rounded up Europe’s “coalition of the willing” in Paris recently to join hands with holdover-president Zelenskyy and stare down Russia’s President Putin with all the glowering determination that men wearing ten-thousand-dollar suits can bear. Although European elites mock us Americans as a bunch of ignorant, hick cowboys, the Paris summit did what it could to convey to the world that Europe’s most serious lawmen had formed a deadly posse that would not relent until every last Russian had been chased out of the European Union’s expanding plantation.
Yet aside from European leaders’ love for bloviation and their penchant for ratcheting up their noses so high in the sky that the rest of the world sees nothing but nose hair, how will they back up all their anti-Russian threats? They can’t. Their militaries are wet noodles, and every European general knows it. It is the U.S. military that allows European lords to prance on stage with the affectation that they possess vestigial spines. It is American troops and their cowboy ways that allow European elites to pretend that their natural state is anything other than supine surrender. You take away U.S. military might from dying NATO, and a contingent of good-ol’-boy Texans could take most of France before mini-mouse Macron changed into his high-heeled loafers.
So why is the Danish prime minister announcing to the world that a U.S. takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO? That’s like announcing to an unknown arsonist that if he doesn’t stop setting fires, you’ll disband the fire department. What is the Danish prime minister’s thinking here? She has one rowboat filled with three guys armed with morally indignant words and a flare gun guarding the world’s largest island. If she sends American troops and military hardware back to the Western Hemisphere, then maybe the same Russian army that has spent the last four years trying to tame the Eastern territories of Ukraine really does conquer all of Europe. I mean, how does Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen plan to defend her Nordic peninsula and surrounding islands from Putin’s Slavic horde? With furrowed brows, legally binding treaties, and stern words?
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WHAT’S BEHIND THE TAKEDOWN OF MADURO ?
January 6, 2026
What’s Behind US Takedown of Maduro? What’s Next?
Trump’s takeover of Venezuela is not merely about oil or regime change but about dealing with the Deep State-backed Communist threat to America and the Western Hemisphere. Will the gamble work?
With the arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro on multiple federal charges, a can of worms has officially been opened. As usual, most of the media is missing (or hiding) the real story.
For decades, Latin America has been a key battlefield in the global communist advance, with Venezuela serving as one of its most strategic footholds.
What began as a Marxist revolution cloaked in populist rhetoric metastasized into a narco-terrorist, Cuban- and Chinese-backed dictatorship that exported and funded chaos, drugs, subversion, and revolution throughout the hemisphere. America is the ultimate prize.
Maduro’s regime, through drug trafficking and theft of oil, was basically the cash cow for the dangerous communist network known as the “São Paulo Forum,” taking over the region like a red tsunami.
Founded in 1990 by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva (then a community organizer, now “president” of Brazil), the Marxist narco-terror group FARC in Colombia, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and others, the goal was always to enslave the region.
We’ve been covering this extensively in The New American, The Epoch Times, and other publications for decades.
Countless nations in Latin America have fallen victim to this network, including Venezuela.
As a puppet regime of Cuba (itself a puppet of the Soviet Union, a regime brought to power and built up by the Deep State), Caracas became a key hub for communist infiltration aimed at undermining liberty, sovereignty, and ultimately the United States itself.
With Cuban help and direction, Venezuela also became the global center for developing tools and technologies to steal elections. There is no doubt that this was on Trump’s mind.
Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him were also deeply involved with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic regime ruling Iran, and other dangerous forces.
As U.S. National Security Council Director of Policy and Planning Rich Higgins warned in 2017, the communist, socialist, Islamist, and globalist alliance seeks to destroy the United States—not just as a nation but as an ideal.
These subversive forces in Latin America have long been backed by the “Deep State” in the United States. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, George Soros, and others have all aided and abetted the Sao Paulo Forum’s machinations, as have operatives within the State Department and the intelligence community
Against that backdrop, President Trump’s “Operation Absolute Resolve” was not merely a military strike or law enforcement operation; it was a frontal challenge to the dangerous global networks that have been tightening their grip on Latin America (and the US) for a generation.
The operation was executed flawlessly. Whether it was wise or constitutional is another question entirely that will be debated for months, if not years.
There were obvious similarities to the capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Law Professor Nicholas Creel at Georgia College and State University argued that the prosecution should have a slam-dunk case.
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NEW YORK CITY MAMDANI
January 5, 2026
. This article paints a very bleak picture of what lies ahead. By the way, Mamdani took the oath of office on the Quran, not the Bible. , Nancy
Planned Incompetence
By: Judd Garrett
Objectivity is the Objective
December 31, 2025
Last Tuesday, two days before Christmas, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed Lillian Bonsignore, a lesbian woman with zero operational firefighting experience, as the head of the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY). At first glance, it’s easy to accuse Mamdani of making the typical far-left DEI hire of a member of the LGBTQ community who is clearly unqualified for the job. These types of hirings have been going on in this country over the last 10 to 15 years. But it is much more nefarious and sinister than that. This exact same type of hiring happened in Los Angeles back in 2022 when Kristin Crowley, also a member of the LGBTQ community, was hired to lead the LAFD. She was unqualified for the job, and they knew it, but they hired her anyway. Being a DEI hire was a shield from criticism. If anybody pointed out her lack of experience or her lack of qualifications, they were immediately accused of being a bigot against members of the LGBTQ community. They were called “misogynist” or “homophobic”. We know the script.
So, the question is, why would Los Angeles and New York City make DEI hires in such consequential positions? Both cities are bloated with bureaucracy – government employees who get paid a lot of money, who do basically nothing. Why wouldn’t they make their DEI hires in that bloated bureaucracy of inconsequence? Why would they make these types of hires in a position whose decisions put the very lives of the citizens at stake? This is not just about DEI. I’m sure they could have found a DEI candidate with firefighting experience who would have some level of capability to do the job. This person was hired because she’s unqualified, incompetent, and will inevitably do a very bad job. Competent fire chiefs will know how to contain fires. Inexperienced, incompetent fire chiefs will oversee complete fire disasters. And that’s what they want.
Look at what happened in Los Angeles. Two years after hiring the unqualified and incompetent DEI candidate, Kristin Crowley, as head of the LAFD, Los Angeles experienced one of the deadliest wildfires in the city’s history, and the fire department had no clue how to contain it. The water reservoirs were so low that the firefighters lacked the resources to adequately fight the fires and prevent them from spreading. Large swathes of Los Angeles were burned to the ground, mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class communities, like the Pacific Palisades. Many people have lost their homes and have been displaced.
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VIDEO – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON – THEY ARE GETTING WHAT THEY DESERVE
January 4, 2026
VIDEO – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON – FRAUD EXPOSED IN MINNESOTA
They are getting what they deserve
SOCIALIST CELL IN U.S.U
January 4, 2026
Second front: How a socialist cell in the US mobilized pro-Maduro foot soldiers within 12 hours
January 3, 2026 By Asra Q. Nomani Fox News
As the U.S. military carried out a daring operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, a second front opened up within minutes in the United States an information warfare, psychological and propaganda operation run by a hardened cell of self-described Marxist, socialist and communist leaders.
For years, this cell has fomented anti-American hate in the U.S. under the cover of “anti-war” protests, rallying activists after the 9/11 attacks to condemn the U.S. response, appropriating “anti-racism” protests after the 2020 killing of George Floyd, marching with Antifa agitators, organizing antisemitic campus encampments after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and activating “working-class Americans” to support Maduro and his regime in a war against “U.S. imperialism.”
A Fox News Digital analysis of their minute-by-minute moves overnight reveals how this network activated a coordinated ideological and information warfare campaign, moving through digital social media channels with quickly produced posters to mobilize foot soldiers to the streets for an “EMERGENCY DAY OF ACTION” in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and an estimated 100 other cities, moving with the speed and discipline of an organized military operation.
Over 12 hours, a network of self-described socialist, communist and Marxist organizations used social media to launch an anti-American propaganda and street campaign in the U.S. to support Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (@BTNewsroom/X, @manolo_realengo/X, @answercoalition/X, @PeoplesForumNYC/X, @PSLNational/X, @VijayPrashad/X, @CodePink/X)
At 1:35 a.m., as U.S. special forces teams had just landed in Venezuela, BreakThrough News, a socialist propaganda arm of the network, published some of the first video from the U.S. military strikes, blasting the Trump administration for waging an “illegal bombing campaign of Caracas,” the capital of Venezuela. It was a talking point that was going to stick.
TRUMP REVEALS VENEZUELA’S MADURO WAS CAPTURED IN ‘FORTRESS’-LIKE HOUSE: ‘HE GOT BUM RUSHED SO FAST’
Ten minutes later, at 1:45 a.m., one of the key leaders of this network, Manolo De Los Santos, executive director at The People’s Forum, a proudly socialist 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New York City, echoed the narrative on social media of an “illegal bombing.”
Less than an hour later, at 2:29 a.m., the ANSWER Coalition, a nonprofit co-founded by a proud Marxist, Brian Becker, published a red siren alert on the social media platform X with a slick new poster, calling supporters to the streets in Times Square for a protest Saturday to support Maduro.
“NO WAR ON VENEZUELA! STOP THE BOMBINGS,” the poster screamed, on brand.
EXPLOSIONS HEARD IN VENEZUELAN CAPITAL OF CARACAS: REPORTS
Minutes later, at 2:34 a.m., The People’s Forum shared the call-to-action, screaming: “EMERGENCY PROTEST”
Soon after, at 2:43 a.m., the Party for Socialism and Liberation shared the poster on X, saying, “Stop the bombings…!”
Congressional lawmakers are already investigating this socialist network for its ties to Neville Roy Singham, a United States-born technology executive who relocated to Shanghai after selling his software firm and starting work that critics say is aligned closely with interests of the Chinese Communist Party. Singham didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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PORTLAND’S IMMIGRATION LEAVE !!!
January 4, 2026
The stupidity of liberals is truly amazing ! NancyYOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP: Portland Rolls Out PAID “Immigration Leave” — City Workers Get 40 Hours Off for Deportation Hearings While Taxpayers Foot the Bill, No Questions Asked
MADURO CAPTURED
January 3, 2026
Trump says Maduro is on the way to New York to face prosecution following his capture
In a live phone interview with Fox and Friends, President Trump said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are heading to New York to face prosecution.
He said the couple was placed aboard the U.S. warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York, where they are facing multiple charges.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLETrump says U.S. will run Venezuela until a new government is in place
President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until the new government can be put in place after the American military removed dictator Nicolas Maduro from power.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a proper and judicious transition,” Mr. Trump said. “We don’t want to be involved with someone else getting in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
Mr. Trump did not provide any details on how the U.S. would run Venezuela or what the time frame would be for a transition to a new government for the country.
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IRAN – SOARING INFLATION AND CURRENCY COLLAPSE
January 3, 2026
Multiple deaths reported as protests over soaring inflation and currency collapse spread across Iran
OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:16 PM – Thursday, January 1, 2026
2:16 PM – Thursday, January 1, 2026
Multiple people have reportedly been killed as protests erupt across Iran over the collapse of the national currency and increasingly high inflation rates.
According to Newsweek, at least six people were killed on Thursday as protesters continue to clash with security forces over economic woes such as increasing inflation rates, which have soared to 40%, along with the collapse of the nation’s currency.
The nationwide protests, now in their fifth day, are the largest in three years, with reports of fatalities in cities including Lordegan, Kuhdasht, and Isfahan.
Video footage from Lordegan shows large crowds gathering as shots can be heard. Local rights groups claimed that two protesters were killed by security forces, who allegedly opened fire on the demonstrators.
The regime’s response to the protests has taken a softer tone, allowing media coverage of the protests while state broadcasters appear sympathetic to the reasoning behind the outrage.
Previous crackdowns on protests have resulted in authorities shutting down communications and labeling protesters as foreign agents, demonstrating the shift in tone.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian publicly acknowledged the government’s responsibility for the nationwide outrage, proclaiming, “If people are dissatisfied, we are to blame—not America or anyone else.”
“Our failures are the result of poor management,” Pezeshkian added.
One local shopper in the Iranian suburb of Karaj told Iran International that “Khamenei has spent over four decades chasing war, missiles and chanting, ‘Death to this or that.’ Now, we can’t even afford rice.”
Meanwhile, American officials expressed support for Iranian protesters in a social media post, calling on Iranians to take a stand against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The people of Iran want freedom. They have suffered at the hands of the Ayatollahs for too long. We stand with Iranians in the streets of Tehran and across the country as they protest a radical regime that has brought them nothing but economic downturn and war,” wrote U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz on Monday.
The nationwide protests come as President Donald Trump threatened to “knock the hell out of” Iran if it rebuilds its nuclear weapons or ballistic missile programs, after the United States “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.
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SPACE’S ‘SLIPPERY SLOPE’
December 30, 2025
A space ‘slippery slope’: Who is responsible for commercial satellites crucial to national security?
This scenario seems highly likely in a major 21st-century conflict: An adversary destroys some of the commercial space satellites on which the U.S. military relies.
Will the U.S. government pick up the bill to replace those satellites, given their vital roles in national security? Will each company with such assets in orbit be treated the same by an across-the-board federal policy or a new law? Or will individual firms negotiate with the Pentagon their own terms of financial protection and wartime reimbursement, depending on how badly the government needs the specific capability that only they can provide?
Those questions are a priority right now inside the Defense Department and in the C-suites of leading American defense companies. In many ways, they represent a uniquely American problem. The thin lines between government and industry in communist China, for example, erase any uncertainty about who is ultimately responsible for defense-related assets in space.
But for the U.S., it’s a much more nuanced proposition. And it’s on track to become infinitely more complicated in the years to come, when the U.S. Space Force by its own estimation could rely heavily on privately owned and operated satellites for everything from command and control to surveillance and reconnaissance and from navigation to communications.
“It’s obviously a question that’s been under debate a lot. It’s a slippery slope,” Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink told The Washington Times recently.
Mr. Meink said similar questions are at play in other arenas, such as undersea cables that transmit data across the world and are typically owned by leading telecommunications companies, big tech firms or other private actors.
Uncertainty about targets
But nowhere will the questions be more prevalent in space, given both the rapidly expanding importance of the domain to virtually everything else that the U.S. military does and the relatively small number of companies capable of doing the complex and expensive work to launch, operate and maintain cutting-edge satellites.
“The challenge has always been trying to go in and specifically underwrite or front any commercial services. It kind of just opens up that can of worms,” Mr. Meink said during a media roundtable at the recent Spacepower 2025 conference in Orlando, Florida.
“Do you have to do that for every commercial service the government uses? That’s untenable at some point,” the secretary said in response to questions from The Times. “But that doesn’t mean there’s not something that should be done and something that can be done. But that’s a very tricky, kind of policy-infused … question that we have to work our way through.”
For war planners, one of the most difficult aspects is figuring out exactly what could become a target, as analysts say that a wide swath of space-related infrastructure could be viewed as de facto pieces of the American war machine, especially by an enemy.
“In a future conflict, other U.S. space operators may find themselves in an adversary’s crosshairs because of the possibility that they might provide service to the U.S. government, even if they were not currently doing so,” Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a recent in-depth analysis of how the U.S. government can protect commercial satellites.
The threats to those private satellites are no longer theoretical.
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