Such rhetoric isn’t harmless. It corrodes the political imagination of a people already steeped in outrage. It plants in the public mind a simple but dangerous idea: that those who disagree with you aren’t just wrong, they’re evil. From that seed grows justification for all manner of destruction. Words like Pelosi’s don’t remain in the abstract. They trickle down into the cultural bloodstream, where they metabolize into rage, and rage, when sanctified by moral certainty, too often becomes violence.

When someone of Pelosi’s stature frames a political opponent as the embodiment of evil, it sets a moral permission structure. If Trump is “the worst thing on the face of the earth,” then what act wouldn’t be justified to stop him? This is the logic that inspires assassination attempts, not only against presidents, but also against high-profile cultural figures from conservative commentators like Charlie Kirk to members of Congress, judges and journalists who deviate from progressive orthodoxy. Once politics becomes moral warfare, the other side must be destroyed, not debated.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is a divisive figure. He can be crude, impulsive and often reckless with language himself. But even at his most provocative, he exists within the political domain. His opponents have every right to criticize his behavior, policies and character. What they do not have the right to do is dehumanize him. Because dehumanization, once normalized, does not end with him. It metastasizes.

The American experiment depends on the belief that we can disagree without seeking one another’s ruin. Once that belief collapses, the republic becomes a battlefield of tribes, not citizens. And right now, that collapse feels increasingly close. The left sees Trump as an existential threat to democracy. The right sees the left as a cabal of totalitarian moralists. Both sides now speak the language of apocalypse.

Pelosi’s comment is not an isolated incident; it’s symptomatic of a larger moral panic among political elites who have lost faith in persuasion and replaced it with demonization. This isn’t politics as usual; it’s politics as exorcism. Every election is now framed as a cosmic struggle between good and evil, and the side that loses is not simply wrong but damned.

The irony is that the same Democrats who decry “political violence” are often those who sanctify the rhetoric that breeds it. You cannot call your opponent a fascist, a racist or “the worst thing on earth” and then act surprised when an unstable mind interprets that as a moral call to arms. When the moral legitimacy of violence enters the public square, even implicitly, the result is predictable: chaos justified in the name of virtue.

The United States has survived depressions, wars and assassinations, but what it cannot survive is the collapse of a shared moral language. Once every disagreement becomes a holy war, compromise dies. And when compromise dies, democracy follows.

What’s needed now is not more moral theater, but moral restraint. The true statesman knows that words can either cool or ignite the passions of the age. The responsible politician, whatever their party, should speak as if the nation’s peace depends on it because it does.

Pelosi may believe she’s defending democracy by condemning Trump as evil incarnate. But in doing so, she risks becoming the very thing she claims to oppose: a figure so blinded by moral outrage that she no longer sees her opponents as fellow citizens. And when that happens, democracy doesn’t just falter, it burns.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

Ms. Pelosi stepped down from her House Democratic leadership role in January 2023, after Republicans won the majority in the 2022 midterm elections. She was a deadweight, not a boon to Democrats.

Let us eschew euphemisms. Nancy Pelosi had been a mean-spirited, vicious, political hypocrite who inflamed rather than diminished partisan divisions. For starters, consider her ad hominem attack on President Donald Trump only days ago. She ranted to Elex Michaelson on CNN, “He’s just a vile creature. The worst thing on the face of the Earth.” Isn’t that an exhortation to another assassination attempt against the president? Shouldn’t Pelosi be prosecuted for threatening Trump’s life?

And what about Ms. Pelosi’s complaint that Mr. Trump “does not honor the Constitution?” That remark takes hypocrisy to a new level. She acquiesced or supported the torture of al-Qaida suspects. She supported the Patriot Act’s violation of the Fourth Amendment’s right to be let alone. As House speaker in 2006, she mothballed the impeachment power of Congress in hopes of furthering the election of a Democrat to the White House in 2008. She was a cheerleader for President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional, disastrous war in Libya. She denounced Edward Snowden’s disclosure of industrial-scale illegal warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency. She notoriously said about the Affordable Care Act, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Nancy Pelosi, good riddance.

The Democratic Party’s success on Tuesday is more than meets the eye. The victories were not a defeat of President Donald Trump. Neither New Jersey nor Virginia nor New York City nor California voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. The federal government shutdown also handicapped Republicans. It is much easier to unite against something than for something. Republicans have 12 months to regain their footing or risk losing the House and Senate to the Democratic Party in 2026. Tuesday should be a wake-up call that a do-nothing Congress is not a winning hand, as President Harry Truman proved in 1948.

President Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to politics did not help. The typical American prefers moderation to extremism, courtesies rather than disparagements, respect in lieu of vilification. A political adversary is not a synonym for a terrorist. We sink or swim together. Our unity is in process, not personalities. Republicans — including Mr. Trump — should accept Tuesday’s electoral results as legitimate children of democracy and self-government at work, just as Democrats accepted the results of the 2024 presidential election. Persisting in casting doubt on elections after legal avenues of relief have been exhausted subverts the nation as a whole.

The Republican Party should awaken from its stupor. It has been reduced to little more than an echo chamber of President Trump, with no planning for what happens after he passes from the political scene. There are no obvious Republican successors. Mr. Trump’s fundraising genius makes him the Federal Reserve of the Republican Party. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 without Trump is like the play “Hamlet” without the Prince of Denmark. Indeed, when President Trump departs the White House, the Republican Party will resemble an acephalous church unless new leadership emerges with a distinct philosophical agenda.

Mr. Trump’s initiatives stand on shaky legal ground. The preponderance has relied on executive orders, not legislation, that can be undone by the stroke of a pen by a successor. “A week is a long time in politics,” said British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Republican Party cannot afford to rest on Mr. Trump’s laurels.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

We should commend the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department for their remarkable restraint and professionalism this morning while handling the protesters outside the Heritage Foundation. Howard Stirk Holdings witnessed protesters disrespecting the officers, and one even assaulted an officer.

It’s disheartening to see police treated with such blatant disrespect, especially when they remain calm and composed in the face of provocation. Exercising the right to protest is one thing, but disrespecting the badge is something that we as a nation should never normalize. Despite the verbal attacks and even one officer being struck in the face, the MPD managed to de-escalate the situation without retaliation. When one protester crossed the line from protected speech to a violent criminal act, they were swiftly arrested, and charges are pending.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

And just recently, a U.S. District Judge in Rhode Island ruled that the USDA must use its existing $6 billion in contingency funds to provide at least partial SNAP benefits, noting in oral argument, “It’s clear that when compared to the millions of people that will go without funds for food versus the agency’s desire not to use contingency funds in case there’s a hurricane need, the balances of those equities clearly goes on the side of ensuring that people are fed.” A similar ruling was made in Massachusetts.

Initiatives such as SNAP have led to an unparalleled crisis for those dependent on these services. This raises the question, though: Why have we allowed this to become an emergency in the first place? Why do 42 million Americans depend on SNAP benefits?

Republican pushback to SNAP should not come as a surprise to anyone. In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted in July, they cut over $180 billion from the SNAP program. The rationale for the reductions and resistance is linked to three factors. First, Republicans seek to address fraud and misuse inside the SNAP program. Second, they look to motivate individuals to get off of SNAP and become self-reliant. And, third, if this can all be achieved, they can subsequently decrease federal spending.

Research indicates a staggering amount of government waste attributable to SNAP overpayments and fraud. In 2023, around $10 billion, constituting 10% of the entire program’s spending, was misused for fraudulent purposes or given to persons in error. Annually, over $1.3 billion in SNAP benefits are trafficked, with individuals selling these benefits to retailers for cash at a rate of 50 to 60 cents on the dollar. From the second quarter of 2023 to the end of 2024, more than 457,000 SNAP households experienced EBT theft, resulting in over $220 million in benefits being stolen by criminals. Estimates suggest that around 40% of victims did not seek reimbursement, so the total amount of theft is likely higher.

This does not mean that some individuals do not face genuine challenges in escaping poverty, whether due to a disability or other uncontrollable circumstances (or if they’re children, of course). The substantial proportion of SNAP payments allocated to individuals who have participated in the program for nearly a decade indicates that prolonged enrollment in SNAP is the norm rather than the exception.

The fundamental question ultimately becomes the following: Should we prefer that 42 million Americans require food assistance, or would we want that figure to be as close to zero as possible? To any rational individual, the latter should be the answer.

So, what strategies can be implemented to transition people off SNAP, enabling them to achieve more successful and comfortable lives? To reduce opportunities for thieves to exploit the vulnerable? And to allow the government to allocate that money toward other programs — or even provide those who truly need more assistance with more?

The solution is inherently complex; however, it must begin with the acknowledgment that SNAP benefits should not and will not be permanent. To achieve a comfortable life without the need for government aid, one must build skills, establish habits and develop income streams that foster self-sufficiency. There is no shame in seeking help, like SNAP, when it’s needed. Those who make efforts to do so should never feel bad about getting government assistance. Nevertheless, it is irresponsible and shameful to refuse to make a genuine effort to become fully self-sufficient.

While Democrats nationwide endeavor to bring back money for SNAP, they have clearly responded to the previous question in the opposite. They believe people should remain on these programs for as long as they want, not as long as they need.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

In the nation

The Shutdown We Need

Grandstanding, not governance, is hurting everyday Americans during this government shutdown

Coming up this week

• The U.S. votes in mid-term elections on Tuesday. The most-watched races include New York City’s mayoral contest, heated gubernatorial polls in Virginia and New Jersey, and California’s Prop. 50 on redistricting (to supporters) / gerrymandering (to those opposed). READ MORE

• Sunday marks the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. READ MORE

Baseball

The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 of a tight World Series that thrilled even non-baseball fans. That makes the Dodgers the first back-to-back Major League Baseball champs since the Yankees won a third consecutive World Series in 2000. READ MORE

International news

Gaza

• Hamas returned the remains of three more hostages, including U.S. citizen Omer Neutra. READ MORE

• Despite Israeli claims otherwise, Hamas maintains that it’s working as fast as it can to locate and return the remains of the other eight hostages who died in captivity over the course of the two-year war.  READ MORE

• Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed one man who was allegedly threatening Israeli troops near Gaza City. READ MORE

Lebanon

• Israel is growing frustrated with the Lebanese government’s lack of progress disarming Hezbollah, and has taken up the task of targeting Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon with near-daily airstrikes in recent weeks. READ MORE

• Lebanon’s President Aoun resents the intrusions and wants Israeli troops to leave the five areas of southern Lebanon that they still occupy. Aoun has called on Israel to negotiate a more permanent ceasefire than the fragile (but lasting) truce they signed a year ago. READ MORE

• However, Israel seems uninterested in negotiating while Aoun’s government is failing to uphold its commitment to contain and disarm Hezbollah. [Analysts point out that Aoun’s Lebanese Armed Forces are weaker than Hezbollah and he can’t do much to force disarmament.] READ MORE

• Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of further Israeli action against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, and blamed Iran for backing both Hezbollah and the Houthis. READ MORE

Tanzania

• Tanzania’s election commission confirmed Samia Suluhu Hassan – who appointed its commissioners – as the winner of last week’s presidential election, with an unsurprising 98% of the vote. The commission also dubiously claimed that turnout was around 75% higher than in 2020, when voters had more of a choice of candidates. READ MORE

• Hassan’s win was essentially uncontested this time, since her government barred both real rivals from running. It also tried to prevent unhappy Tanzanians from protesting against the election by imposing a nationwide curfew, restricting internet access, and condescendingly calling critics of the undemocratic poll “neither responsible nor patriotic.” READ MORE

• The main opposition party, CHADEMA – whose leader is imprisoned awaiting sentencing on spurious charges – claims security officers have killed hundreds of protesters. Demonstrations continue, despite Hassan’s crackdown. READ MORE

China

• U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said China made a “real mistake” by proposing since-postponed export control restrictions on rare earths, since the threat alone motivated the U.S. to get serious about finding alternative sources for its rare earths needs. READ MORE

• Australia is one of the alternative sources being developed: President Trump and Prime Minister Albanese recently signed an agreement to jointly develop Australia’s rare earth supplies. READ MORE

• Incidentally, Bessent’s comments felt like a close parallel to the effect that U.S. export controls on advanced computing chips have had on Chinese chipmaking, where supply restrictions forced fast-track domestic innovators to quickly catch up to technologies they were barred from importing. READ MORE

Venezuela

• During a wide-ranging interview, President Trump told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that he doubts the U.S. will go to war with Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, but said Maduro’s authoritarian government has “been treating us very badly” and said he thought Maduro’s days are numbered. READ MORE

Afghanistan

• A magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan, killing at least 20. The full extent of the damage is still unclear, but there are reports of damage to Mazar-i-Sharif’s Blue Mosque. READ MORE

The World Daily Brief is composed daily by former CIA and Intelligence officers.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

For too long, both parties have governed as if the laws of arithmetic didn’t apply to them. Year after year, Congresses controlled by Republicans and Democrats alike have voted for budgets that plunge us deeper into debt — now a staggering $38 trillion and counting. Each year, we add another $1.5 to $2 trillion in deficits. These aren’t emergency measures or wartime expenses. They’re routine shortfalls — ordinary overspending that any responsible household, business or local government would never tolerate.

If a private company managed its books the way Washington manages ours, it would have long ago gone bankrupt. In truth, the United States already has — just not officially. We’ve papered over insolvency with borrowed money, low interest rates and a political culture addicted to spending beyond its means. But reality always catches up, and ours is beginning to.

The cost of servicing the debt — just paying interest — is now consuming a historic share of federal spending. Hundreds of billions of dollars each year go not to defense, education or infrastructure, but simply to keep up with our past excesses. That’s money that could fund programs we all agree are essential — such as SNAP benefits, which millions of low-income Americans rely on and which may soon run dry during this very shutdown.

We are literally borrowing money to pay interest on money we already borrowed. That is not sustainable. It is financial quicksand, and the longer we avoid confronting it, the deeper we sink.

That’s why, uncomfortable as it is, this fight is healthy. It’s the fever that signals the infection is finally being recognized. For years, Washington has operated on the illusion that fiscal restraint is optional — that we can endlessly defer the reckoning. But the shutdown is forcing clarity. It’s exposing the fault lines, the contradictions and ultimately, the moral bankruptcy that underlies our fiscal one.

Yes, air traffic controllers deserve to be paid. Yes, federal workers in Maryland should not bear the brunt of the political stalemate. But those hardships, as painful as they are, are minuscule compared to what’s coming if we continue down this road. When interest payments alone begin to crowd out defense, infrastructure and basic safety-net spending — when creditors begin to question the value of the dollar — the pain will be far more widespread, and far more permanent.

The real crisis isn’t the shutdown — it’s the decades of moral cowardice that made it inevitable. Both parties share the blame. Republicans have cut taxes without cutting spending. Democrats have expanded entitlements without paying for them. Each side has defended its own priorities, and neither has had the courage to say what must be said: We can’t have everything.

And Americans aren’t innocent in this. We demand balanced budgets in principle but cheer for every new subsidy, every program that benefits us personally. We balance our own checkbooks while expecting the federal government to spend without limit. We want the benefits of a welfare state without the costs of one. Prior generations would have called that moral weakness. They were right.

What we’re facing now is not just a budgetary challenge — it’s a moral one. A country that refuses to live within its means has lost something fundamental: its discipline, its honesty, its sense of responsibility to future generations. The national debt is not an abstract figure; it is the accumulated record of our moral failure to govern ourselves.

So let the debate continue. Let Congress face the arithmetic it has long ignored. This shutdown, frustrating as it is, may finally be the spark we need to begin a national reckoning with the truth: We are broke, and it is our own doing.

We will not fix this in one budget cycle or even one administration. It will take years of painful choices, shared sacrifice and political courage that has been absent for decades. But the sooner both parties — and the American people — accept that reality, the sooner the long road to solvency and sanity can begin.

Because the American experiment has never been sustained by money alone. It has endured through character — and that, at long last, is what must be restored.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

A so-called grassroots uprising is targeting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But it’s not grassroots at all. It’s a coordinated takedown by the same establishment Kennedy has threatened to expose. Seven petitions, over 1,000 HHS insiders, and multiple “science” groups, many created in the last few months — are all pushing the same message: Remove RFK Jr. from office.

Their big move? A Nov. 5 “March for Health & Science” in Washington, D.C. But behind the banners and hashtags sit the same players — pharma-funded networks, P.R. operatives and government insiders. This isn’t democracy in action; it’s astroturfing by the old guard. At the center is Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance executive who hid his Wuhan ties. Now he’s leading the anti-RFK Jr. campaign under a new front group, the “Science Accountability Institute.” The same man who helped bury the lab-leak story now wants to silence Kennedy. RFK Jr. has done what no one else dared: freeze mRNA funding, demand transparency and challenge the captured health bureaucracy. Now, that bureaucracy is striking back.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a Hall of Famer, was indicted for poker rigging activities. Billups, along with others, is purported to have engaged in Mafia-affiliated poker games, employing sophisticated cheating devices such as X-ray tables, infrared contact lenses and custom card shuffling machines to extract over $7 million from victims. Billups was allegedly used as bait — a well-known basketball star — to lure in unsuspecting victims. When the purported victims of this scheme incurred losses and declined to pay their gambling debts, the members of these organized crime families involved would resort to threats and intimidation to guarantee the collection of their money.

Terry Rozier is purported to have conspired with organized crime organizations to furnish insider information regarding NBA games. Gamblers are alleged to have profited from at least seven games, three of which involved Rozier or others withdrawing prematurely, allowing others to place prop bets that yielded hundreds of thousands of dollars, wagering on them to underperform (such as betting on them to score under a certain amount of points, or to get fewer than a certain number of rebounds, among other bets) in those games. In one brazen example, Rozier left after playing for just nine minutes in one game.

This is clearly the most significant sports scandal in U.S. history since members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to fix the 1919 World Series. The accusations against Pete Rose are not remotely comparable to this. We are talking about millions of dollars and the collusion between the Mafia and NBA players, including a Hall of Famer. Although these remain mere allegations at this point, the evidence is damning.

This was merely a question of time. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in 2018 that the federal government lacked control over sports wagering, permitting states to legalize in-person and mobile gambling, athletes — regardless of their skill level — have been afforded the opportunity to exploit their positions to steal millions. And today, with the ability to wager on sports through largely unregulated prediction markets and offshore online casinos utilizing cryptocurrencies, individual athletes can execute their plans undetected.

As the Apostle Paul said, “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil; some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

Money corrupts everyone, including those who don’t need any more money. Terry Rozier earned $24 million per year for his talents. No one needs more than that; nonetheless, he was prepared to jeopardize all of it for a laughably small sum — merely what he earns from playing a few games.

This is the course that our nation is charting. There is an increasing number of opportunities to wager one’s hard-earned money on various activities, accompanied by the allure of wealth and the promise of overcoming poverty. We are moving toward an environment where such conduct will become commonplace, where all facets of life become bettable, and anyone possessing insider information on any matter can use it to their advantage, to the disadvantage of others.

I cannot express much sympathy for the betting sites and bookies that incurred losses from this agreement. They seemingly have it all their way. They terminate your account when you win too much, let you continue to bet when you keep losing, and get you imprisoned if you don’t play by the rules.

This is merely the beginning. The next sport, if any, should be the NFL, as its betting volume surpasses that of every other sport by a gargantuan sum. Players capable of managing every facet of the game are leaving an excessive amount of money on the table if they’re not fixing their performances already.

America must acknowledge that gambling is increasingly infiltrating all facets of life. There are so many people who will happily take your money as they promise you riches beyond belief.

Unfortunately, like their residents, states have grown addicted to gambling revenue, and in many foreign nations, corrupt politicians are practically owned by major betting companies. Gambling is a scheme as old as civilization itself, and it survives for one simple reason: It’s immensely profitable. Players, on average, always lose more than they win.

Once, gambling was seen as complicated, taboo and something to be avoided. Now it’s effortless, normalized and even promoted by governments. In the end, what did we really expect?

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

Mr. Santos pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft on Aug. 19, 2024. The master of deceit and shifting lies has never disputed his felonies. He began serving his sentence of more than seven years’ imprisonment on July 25, 2025. The sentencing judge, Joanna Seybert, was nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed under President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Santos has never questioned the legality of his sentence. Indeed, the sentence was recommended by the Trump administration itself on April 25. Mr. Trump, nevertheless, commuted Santos’ sentence to time served on Oct. 17 after he had served a tiny fraction of a more than seven-year sentence for multiple federal felonies.

What’s wrong with this picture? Mr. Santos promised to become a champion of prison reform. But how credible is the promise? His life betrays no earmarks of philanthropy or selflessness.

But why should we be surprised at the commutation? President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, fugitive financier, on his last day in office in 2001. Mr. Rich had fled the United States in 1983 to avoid charges of tax evasion, fraud and trading with the enemy. His ex-wife was a major Democratic fundraiser who had donated to the Clintons. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce a quid pro quo.

Politicians, especially, should remind themselves daily of the famous lines in Sir Walter Scott’s “Marmion,” “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

The East Wing of the White House is no more. At least for now. President Trump is undertaking a massive renovation or upgrade. He contemplates a grand $300 million, 90,000 square foot ballroom funded by private donors. A nation lives by symbols. And the grand ballroom will symbolize America’s spectacular success as a nation.

I admit to instinctive mortification or anger at seeing the East Wing demolished. It evoked images of 9/11 wrought by international terrorists. But time cooled my emotional reaction.

Appearances are reality, as Plato related in the Allegory of the Cave in “The Republic.” Moreover, how is the ballroom materially different from Mount Rushmore, which was funded by a combination of federal and private donations?

History also speaks volumes. Versailles survived the French Revolution. Its grandeur did not retard France’s embrace of democracy and human rights. It flourishes today under France’s Fifth Republic. So why all the brouhaha and lamentations as if the East Wing had been made indistinguishable from the British burning the White House in the War of 1812 or London after the blitz in World War II? Presidents routinely change busts, statues or paintings in the interior of the White House as expressions of their philosophy or aesthetics. President Trump replaced his predecessor’s portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt with one of George Washington. How is Trump’s East Wing upgrade any different?

The media habitually turns fleas into elephants born of liberal bias. Trump’s ballroom is not an insult to ordinary Americans. It is not a modern version of Marie Antoinette’s reported “Let them eat cake” remark. The media circus over the ballroom calls to mind Lord Chesterfield’s astuteness to his son: “A strong mind sees things in their true proportions; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones.”

Nigeria, with its northeastern regions controlled by radical Fulani extremists like Boko Haram, is the most dangerous country in the world for Christians. The Christian Biafrans, led by Mazi Nnanmdi Kanu, face an ongoing genocide. Kanu has been illegally detained in solitary confinement as a political prisoner for more than four years after Nigeria kidnapped and tortured him in Nairobi, Kenya, in June 2021, and resorted to criminal extraordinary rendition to bring him to Abuja, Nigeria, to subsist and die in a dungeon.

In July 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ordered Nigeria to release Mr. Kanu immediately and unconditionally with reparations. It found his kidnapping, torture, and indefinite detention without trial violated 16 internationally binding human rights covenants. Nigeria has ignored the order for more than three years while the media and the United Nations have slumbered, while the Biafran genocide has continued unabated. World attention is preoccupied with the horrors in Gaza or Ukraine. Is it because Biafrans are Black? Is it because Nigeria is a secondary or tertiary player in power politics?

Does the world profess to deem all genocides as equal, but to treat some genocides as more equal than others? You decide.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.

However, the past few years have featured another division that is starting to take shape here in Baltimore, the division among those who want to attribute the reasons for the city’s recent historic reduction in homicides and violent crime. There is a faction that hails Mayor Brandon Scott and his Group Violence Reduction Strategy as the reason crime has dissipated across the city. His method consists of a focused deterrence model of so-called violence interrupters offering resources and programs to those identified as being the ones perpetrating violence across the city.

Others give the sole credit to Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan J. Bates, who on day one of his administration sent a message to criminals to “pack their toothbrush” if they continued to engage in illegal activities. The first-term prosecutor backed up his words with a coordinated approach to prosecuting gun crimes alongside Gov. Wes Moore and former U.S. Attorney Erek Barron, which led to thousands of repeat, violent offenders prosecuted and sitting behind bars, unable to perpetrate the violence Baltimore once became accustomed to. And regardless of which side you choose, the numbers don’t lie.

During the first two years of the Scott administration, during which Mayor Scott promised a 15% reduction in homicides each year, Baltimore witnessed homicides and violent crime increase, continuing the 300+ annual homicides trend the city had witnessed for the six years prior. It wasn’t until 2023, the first year of the Bates administration, that Baltimore saw the numbers start to steadily decline at such a dramatic pace that this year, Baltimore is seeing the greatest decline in violent crime and homicides it has witnessed in well over 50 years.

One such program affiliated with Mayor Scott’s deterrence model is the violent interrupters who work for the program known as Safe Streets. This public health program, made up of formerly convicted felons who are “influencers” within the criminal world, is focused on having outreach workers intervene when “beef” occurs in their community, looking to step in and de-escalate situations and mediate the conflict. They work for the city, specifically the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, but technically are not city employees, having their employment housed under one of two non-profits — Catholic Charities and LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope.

This new operation model was set up by Mayor Scott in 2022, taking the roughly 40 Safe Street workers operating in the 10 neighborhoods in which the program operates and stashing them safely under the umbrella of these non-profits, thereby shielding them from the same public scrutiny that an average city employee would endure. Unlike other Safe Street programs across the country, like the one in New York, where the workers working within the program have their faces and names publicly shared on their website, Baltimore has continued to hide the identification of these workers from the general public, the media and even the state prosecutor.

Unfortunately, the mayor’s decision to continue touting a program surrounded by a shroud of secrecy may have just put the program and its leadership under a legal microscope, after FOX45 recently uncovered several cases in which individuals charged with various crimes went into court touting their affiliation with the Safe Streets program in an attempt to get sent home during bail review hearings. The attorneys for the three individuals in question were captured on court audio recordings celebrating the work their client had done for the program and making the argument to the judge that this should weigh heavily when deciding whether they should be detained without bail or sent home while awaiting a court hearing.

One such individual is Antonio Taylor, whose attorney stated on the record that he was “somewhat responsible for the decrease of crime in the city as the director of outreach” for the Safe Streets program. In fact, Mr. Taylor was standing next to Mayor Scott when he was arrested for this latest incident, according to his attorney. However, according to the city, none of these individuals work for, or have any affiliation with, Safe Streets. If that is the case, it calls into question whether there is a larger problem of individuals perpetrating a fraud on the courts by fraudulently listing employment with an organization.

This is something that has raised the eyebrows of State’s Attorney Bates, who told FOX45 that his office is seriously considering whether or not to open an investigation into the Safe Streets program based on these possible fraudulent actions. However, he remains perplexed as to why the city refuses to release the names of these individuals, even to him, whose job is to ensure the crimes these individuals are supposed to be preventing are prosecuted, but it appears that they may be contributing to the crime numbers.

So now the question remains as to the group’s effectiveness in the community if they are continuing to engage in illegal activities, if these individuals do in fact work for Safe Streets. Citizens are also seemingly wondering about the true effectiveness of this program, which consists of a very small catchment area of the city, and continues to operate under a cloud of secrecy and suspicion, all while being funded by the city with millions of taxpayer dollars.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.