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California Democrat Lobbyist Gets Six Months in Jail for Wire Fraud

The downfall of Melahat Rafiei, once an influential figure in Orange County Democrat politics, is now official. 

On Friday, a federal judge sentenced Rafiei to six months in prison for attempted wire fraud, closing a case that has lingered since her 2019 arrest. 

The ruling not only punished her crimes but also highlighted how deeply corruption has penetrated Democrat politics in California.

Rafiei, who previously led the Orange County Democrat Party and worked as a prominent lobbyist, admitted guilt in 2023 under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

In addition to acknowledging the wire fraud charge, she admitted that she attempted to bribe two Irvine City Council members to secure favorable cannabis legislation. 

Although she was not charged with the bribery allegations, her plea agreement made it clear that she had actively used political influence for personal and financial gain.

The judge imposed a sentence of six months in federal custody, a $10,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. 

He also emphasized that Rafiei had been able to build her career because of democrat institutions and that she had abandoned those principles in pursuit of power and money. 

Rafiei has been ordered to surrender to authorities by late September.

In court, Rafiei offered little defense beyond expressing that she would accept whatever penalty the court determined. 

Her legal team argued that she had made a positive contribution to the community in the past and highlighted the number of friends and relatives who supported her at sentencing. 

They portrayed her as someone who had already lost her career and reputation, even before serving time in prison.

The case had been stalled for years, mainly because Rafiei agreed to cooperate with federal investigators after her arrest. 

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No, That Wood-Chopping Illegal Alien in Washington State Is Not a ‘Firefighter’ or ‘Victim’

Friday night, a relative sent me a text. That wasn’t unusual. He’s recently discovered texting as a vehicle to rant, and specifically, to rant at me. The context also wasn’t unusual. It was a rant about “fascist Trump.” Trump, he wrote, had sent his stormtroopers to Washington state and they had pulled two, brave firefighters off the front lines of a forest fire. Fascist! He cried – they are pulling  firefighters away from fighting fires!  What amount of children and puppies will die because of Trump?!  

This relative is a card-carrying leftist. I don’t know the source of his Kool-Aid. I could guess. Maybe it’s just ghosts in his head, but he’s not alone. Politicians who know better disseminate nonsense and half-truths to agitate the base. Gavin Newsom has been stumping lately, claiming that Trump will “cancel” the 2026 elections. 

After I got the text from my relative (and sighed deeply), I looked up what actually happened. This is from a  U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release:

Due to the remote location of the work site, BLM requested USBP assistance verifying the identities of all personnel present. The work crews, totaling 44 individuals, required identity verification to ensure that the individuals on-site matched the contractor rosters.

…

USBP agents supported BLM rangers in verifying the identities of the contracted personnel. Several discrepancies were identified, and two individuals were found to be present in the United States illegally, one with a previous order of removal. The two individuals were arrested and transported to the Bellingham Station on charges of illegal entry and 8 US Code 1326 – Reentry of removed aliens. Forty-two individuals were released from the scene and escorted off Federal lands. 

The contract termination and enforcement action did not interfere with firefighting operations or the response to any active fires in the area, nor did it pose any danger to the surrounding community. 

Border Patrol had been alerted that those illegal aliens had been hired by an independent, third-party contractor based in Oregon. They were “firefighters” on paper but neither were fighting fires. Border Patrol checked records, and the contractor’s records didn’t match the people on site. Officials found two guys who had entered the US illegally and detained them. 

Those two were not out on the fire line stopping a fire. They weren’t saving babies. They weren’t rescuing puppies. They were chopping wood. Those two were detained and transported to a detention center. But legacy media turned the narrative into CBP and ICE pulling heroes away from the front lines. My relative bought that myth, like every myth he’s consumed since Trump was sworn in.  

Dem politicians are fond of pouring gas on the fire. They are also fond of lying. 

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Report: Trump Punishes Newsom by Canceling $427M Wind Project

President Donald Trump may have chosen to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to a California wind project to punish Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) for signing a separate climate change deal with Denmark.

Last week, as Breitbart News reported, the Trump administration had canceled $679 million that was to have been spent on supposedly “doomed” offshore wind projects — $427 million of which was to have gone to a single wind project in Humboldt County, California.

The New York Times reported Friday:

The Transportation Department on Friday said it was terminating or withdrawing $679 million in federal funding for 12 projects around the country intended to support the development of offshore wind power, the latest of the Trump administration’s escalating attacks against the wind industry.

The funds, approved by the Biden administration, include $427 million awarded last year to upgrade a marine terminal in Humboldt County, Calif. The new terminal would be used to assemble and launch wind turbines capable of floating in the ocean, which the state of California had been planning to deploy to meet its renewable energy goals.

The list of targeted projects also includes $48 million for an offshore wind port on Staten Island, $39 million to upgrade a port near Norfolk, Va. and $20 million for a marine terminal in Paulsboro, N.J. Most of the projects were intended to be staging areas for the construction of giant wind turbines that would eventually be placed at sea.

“Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg bent over backwards to use transportation dollars for their Green New Scam agenda while ignoring the dire needs of our shipbuilding industry,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said at the time. “Thanks to President Trump, we are prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects that cost much and offer little.”

One project, however, off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island, was reportedly 80% complete and due to begin operations next year.

It is being developed by Danish wind farm developer Orsted.

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Violence Is The Logical And Desired Outcome Of Leftists’ Trans Victim Narrative

The horrific Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, became the latest act of violence perpetrated by an individual claiming to be transgender. The FBI confirmed the “shooter has been identified as Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman.” Victimhood narratives always end in violence, making grievance politics a precursor to atrocities ranging from mass shootings to genocide.

The left sells this oppressor/oppressed narrative to its constituents — including and especially the so-called trans community, but this community stands out for one important reason: they are uniquely prone to irrational behavior as gender dysphoria is a mental disorder.

Imagine if the leftist press relentlessly pushed a narrative telling schizophrenics that their very existence is being threatened by an evil cabal of conservatives plotting to destroy them. Imagine if once impartial but now ideologically corrupt medical institutions reinforced that messaging. People with schizophrenia would be far more likely to commit acts of violence against their “oppressors.” It doesn’t take much clairvoyance to predict that sequence of events.

It would be unthinkable to exploit schizophrenics by affirming their delusions, granting them elevated status in society, and giving them carte blanche to behave however they like, and yet this is precisely what the left is doing with gender dysphoria. Increasingly bizarre activism on behalf of the “trans community” is characterized as the noble pursuit of “rights” intended to untangle victims caught in the diabolical web of an evil cis mafia conspiring against them.

Rather than recognizing and treating this for what it is — a mental disorder — Democrats are instead convincing “trans people” that the despair, anxiety, frustration, sadness, and confusion they experience derive from treacherous bad actors who wish to undermine their identity. If only “backward” Americans would allow men to invade women’s bathrooms, to shower alongside them at gyms and schools, to categorically destroy women’s sports, to sexually mutilate scores of children through macabre surgeries, then the “trans community” would ascend to a state of eternal bliss. That’s what the left tells people suffering from a mental disorder. Their pending euphoria is made impossible only through the bigotry of nonbelievers.  

People suffering from mental disorders often face an irresistible temptation to attribute their afflictions to the unwillingness of others to embrace reality as they see it. To pour gasoline on that fire by giving credence to a warped reality is unprecedented in the medical community or in society at large – but that’s exactly what our most powerful institutions are doing. Affirming a reality that doesn’t actually exist helps no one except self-righteous ideologues whose insatiable thirst for power and faux enlightenment are pursued at the expense of everyone else, including and especially the patients they “treat.”

The fallout is exactly what you’d expect — people are beginning to behave in predictably violent ways — most notably the aforementioned Annunciation Catholic School shooting and the shooting at a Nashville Christian school in 2023. As is the case with all school shootings, a percentage of onlookers struggling with similar mental problems will see these violent outbursts as their only option to settle the score. By embracing a distorted sense of reality and identifying heretics supposedly responsible for the suffering of so-called trans people, the left is doing what it does best: priming people to commit acts of violence to further a perverted ideology.

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Nutcase Leftists Are Adamant That Trump Is Terminally Ill

TDS riddled Left wing extremists have come up with a new source of hope, with many of them posting videos and posts claiming President Trumps is either terminally sick or already dead.

Their proof? Trump hasn’t been seen in public for a day or two, except for when he was spotted in public as recently as yesterday morning, of course.

Another piece of stone cold evidence they have for their whacked out theory is that JD Vance said this week that he was “ready to step in” if he had to when asked about his role as VP. As if he’d give any other answer.

Leftist lunatic David Pakman claimed that Trump “had not been seen” for three entire days and further suggested that his TruthSocial posts are now being written by AI.

It doesn’t seem to matter that Trump was out golfing the same morning.

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HUD launches nationwide review of illegal immigrants living in public housing: ‘The gravy train is over’

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced that the Trump administration ordered a nationwide review of public housing in an attempt to root out illegal immigrants.

The Trump administration notified every public housing authority (PHA) across the country that it will be given 30 days to share the citizenship status of its tenants or potentially face the loss of federal funding.

Every PHA is required to provide HUD with eligibility information, such as citizenship status. However, two anonymous senior HUD officials speaking with the Washington Examiner claimed that a “significant” number have opted to withhold the information from the federal government, or never collected it in the first place.

“I bet Biden HUD didn’t do anything on collecting citizenship info since they support current [regulations] that allow illegals to be in mixed-status housing, so they wouldn’t have wanted to know those numbers in the first place,” one HUD official told the outlet.

The “mixed family” units are defined as households with “one or more individuals who do not contend that they have immigration status.”

The letter, reviewed by the Washington Examiner, gives the PHAs 30 days to identify and provide the names, mailing addresses, and legal immigration status for individuals in mixed family units.

The letter also orders the PHAs to provide a “spreadsheet, analysis, or other prepared or gathered data concerning the number and/or location of tenants with ineligible immigration status in all Public Housing covered programs as well as a “full tenant file” for any tenant who was found to have “misrepresented either his or her citizenship, national, or eligible immigration status.”

Meanwhile, Turner issued a statement, announcing, “No longer will illegal aliens be able to leave citizenship boxes blank or take advantage of HUD-funded housing, riding the coattails of hardworking American citizens.”

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‘We Have Many Options’: US Warships Pass Through Panama Canal Toward Southern Caribbean

U.S. warships were seen entering the Panama Canal while navigating east toward the Atlantic, according to photos taken on Aug. 30.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Aug. 19 that President Donald Trump was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into [the United States] and to bring those responsible to justice.”

“Many Caribbean nations and many nations in the region have applauded the administration’s counterdrug operations and efforts,” Leavitt added.

As Jacob Burg reports below, the previous day, a White House official told The Epoch Times that U.S. naval and air assets would deploy to the southern Caribbean Sea amid a heightened counternarcotics effort.

That deployment puts U.S. warships a short distance off Venezuela’s northern coastline, following years of strained relations between the United States and Venezuela.

In 2017, Trump told reporters, “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”

Trump rejected the 2018 snap presidential election, in which Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner. He also backed then-Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaidó’s efforts to declare himself the rightful head of state of Venezuela until new elections commenced.

In 2019, Guaidó led a short-lived attempted uprising against Maduro. A year later, the U.S. Department of Justice declared that Maduro was linked to both drug and weapons trafficking and offered $15 million for information leading to the regime leader’s arrest.

When Maduro claimed he had won Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration rejected the results, and accusations mounted that the outcome was rigged for Maduro.

Now, the Justice Department is offering $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.

Maduro denounced the news that U.S. warships were traveling to the Southern Caribbean this week.

On Aug. 28, Venezuela criticized the U.S. naval buildup to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and accused Washington of breaking the founding U.N. Charter.

“It’s a massive propaganda operation to justify what the experts call kinetic action—meaning military intervention in a country which is a sovereign and independent country and is no threat to anyone,” Venezuelan U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada told reporters after meeting with Guterres.

In February, the Trump administration designated several transnational gangs, including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as global terrorist organizations.

In response to the U.S. actions, Maduro said, “Our diplomacy isn’t the diplomacy of cannons, of threats, because the world cannot be the world of 100 years ago.”

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Noem demands Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker drop sanctuary policies after alleged illegal immigrant murderer arrested: ‘He’s failing those families’

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem criticized Illinois Governor JB Pritzker for upholding sanctuary laws after requesting the extradition of an illegal immigrant who allegedly killed a woman in her Illinois apartment and has since fled to Mexico.

Gabriel P. Calixto is the individual suspected of stabbing 24-year-old Emma Shafer in her Springfield, Illinois, apartment in July 2023. Calixto was in the United States illegally when the crime was committed, and has since been captured by Mexican law enforcement.

Calixto is being charged with first-degree murder and domestic battery in connection with the attack.

“The vicious illegal alien murderer who has been evading justice for two years after stabbing 24-year-old Emma Shafer has been ARRESTED. We will continue to work with federal authorities to coordinate extradition proceedings,” Noem stated. “THANK YOU to our law enforcement partners for bringing this perpetrator to justice.”

Noem went on to criticize Pritzker’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s imminent federal intervention in Chicago to conduct immigration raids while highlighting the issue of violent crime that has plagued Chicago for decades.

“For 13 consecutive years, Chicago had more murders than any other American city,” Noem stated on Sunday. “In fact, just last year, in 2024, they had three times the amount of murders than LA did, five times more than New York City.”

“So he can talk about what a great job he’s doing as governor, but he’s failing those families who will no longer have their child with them, their mother or their father or their cousin, aunt, and uncle that are gone forever because of the violence that’s happening in Chicago,” she continued.

Noem, a former governor of South Dakota, argued that Pritzker should be fighting for his people instead of the president, suggesting that it “seems like it’s more about Gov. Pritzker’s ego, now, rather than actually protecting his people.”

“If he has one murder in the city of Chicago, he should be calling President Trump and saying, ‘What’s your ideas? What can we do?’” Noem added.

“They don’t even honor our detainers in Chicago. They don’t go out there and work with us to make sure we’re bringing people to justice. And instead, he goes on TV and he attacks me when we’re doing exactly what those people need. They need someone to help them get the dangerous criminals off their streets.”

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First Population-Wide Peer-Reviewed Study Finds COVID-19 “Vaccines” Increase Risk of Multiple Cancers — CONFIRMS Fears of “Turbo Cancer” Epidemic

A bombshell peer-reviewed study out of Italy has just shattered the narrative peddled by Big Pharma, corporate media, and government health bureaucrats.

For the first time, a population-wide cohort of nearly 300,000 people tracked over 30 months has revealed that the so-called “safe and effective” COVID-19 shots are linked to alarming spikes in multiple forms of cancer.

Researchers followed every resident aged 11 and older in Italy’s Pescara province from June 2021 through December 2023, examining hospital records and adjusting for age, sex, prior health conditions, and even prior COVID infection.

The researchers allegedly found that those who received at least one vaccine dose had a much lower risk of dying from any cause compared to the unvaccinated, and this protective effect was even stronger in people who had three or more doses.

When looking at cancer, the picture was less clear. People who had been vaccinated appeared somewhat more likely to be hospitalized with a new cancer diagnosis than those who were unvaccinated, particularly for cancers of the breast, bladder, and colon.

However, this increased risk was only evident in people who had never been infected with COVID-19, and it disappeared—or even reversed—when the analysis required at least twelve months to pass between vaccination and a hospital admission for cancer.

  • Hospitalizations for cancer were 35% higher in vaccinated individuals versus the unvaccinated (HR 1.23).
  • The link was strongest in men and in those with no prior COVID infection.
  • Overall Cancer Risk: +23% after just one dose
  • Breast Cancer: +54% risk after vaccination
  • Bladder Cancer: +62% increased risk
  • Colorectal Cancer: +35% increased risk

Even after multiple doses, the risks remained elevated across the board.

The authors noted that vaccinated individuals are usually healthier, wealthier, and more likely to get preventative care, a phenomenon called the “healthy vaccinee bias.”

If anything, the numbers should have shown lower cancer rates. Instead, cancers surged. That means the real danger could be far worse than what the data shows.

Doctors and whistleblowers have been warning for years about sudden, aggressive cancers appearing in otherwise healthy people after the jab.

This study, alongside more than 100 other peer-reviewed papers, confirms the link between mRNA injections and deadly cancer pathways. A new medical term has even been coined: COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced “Turbo Cancer.”

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Democrats Demand “Assault Weapons” Ban After Trans Mass Shooting In Minneapolis

In the US, gun deaths are often the focus of progressive and international criticism, with claims that the nation is a wellspring of violence and murder that could be solved simply by banning firearms.  The disdain of the political left for the 2nd Amendment is no secret and their efforts to erase gun rights from the Constitution is a constant point of contention within American society.  

Of course, this means that Democrats are required to ignore every other contributing factor to any shooting and deflect when they are confronted with inconvenient truths.  Leftists are, once again, attempting to redirect public discourse as yet another trans shooter has hit the news feeds.  The Minneapolis killer is one of at least five active shooters since 2018 that were confirmed as transgender. 

Multiple other active shooter events have taken place in which the trans status of the killers was suspected but never revealed by authorities (authorities tried to hide Audrey Hale’s trans status and her manifesto, for example).

In the case of the Robert Westman, a male posing as a female, notes from a manifesto and other evidence indicates that the trans ideology was central to his decision to murder two children and injure 17 others at a Christian school.  It was the direct inspiration for the attack.

However, Democrat leaders and media figures like former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki argue otherwise.  They claim that the availability of “assault rifles” is the real cause, not the insane political philosophy that ruled over Westman’s every waking moment.  Psaki shed alligator tears for the children of the Church of the Annunciation, while simultaneously denying that the trans ideology had anything to do with it and blaming conservatives for not supporting a firearms ban.

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