“Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act helped roughly triple the ICE budget, allocating $45 billion for building new immigration centers and hiring 10,000 new ICE agents. One dispiriting lesson of the imperial boomerang is that, once. bought and paid for, structures of intimidation and oppression tend to endure.” David Wallace-Wells, 1/25/2026
Update, 1/30/2026 – The Washington Post reported that local officials are raising logistical and humanitarian concerns in 23 towns where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to convert industrial buildings into detention centers that combined would hold up to 80,000 people. ICE has offered few details about its plan since The Washington Post first reported on it in December 2025.
In the years preceding his death in 1875, George Templeton Strong, a prominent Wall Street attorney, kept a voluminous journal of his life and times. In April 1865, near the end of the American civil war, he wrote, “These four years have reduced me to something like pauperism, But I am profoundly grateful for them nevertheless. They have given me — & my wife & my boys, — a country worth living in & living for, & to be proud of.”
I can’t say President Trump’s inhumane crackdown on immigrants and harassment and murder of American citizens in the past year have given me a country worth living in, living for and to be proud of.
I doubt 7-year-old Diana Crespo, a second grader at Gresham’s Alder Elementary School, and 5-year-old Liam Ramos, the bunny-hatted child detained by immigration agents in Minneapolis, see America as a country worth living in and living for and to be proud of either. They are both being held at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s South Texas Family Residential Center in Texas.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spread its detention center tentacles across the United States:
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported on January 29, 2026 that ICE is planning another detention center in Newport, Oregon as soon as May.
The spread of these. detention centers reminds me of another brutal time.
Most of us know the names of a few Nazi concentration camps, like Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank died. But they were part of a massive complex of more than 850 ghettos, concentration camps, forced-labor camps and extermination camps CNN has identified. They stretched from France and the Netherlands in the west to Estonia, Lithuania and Poland in the east that the Nazis established during the 12 years Adolf Hitler was in power. Their purpose — to segregate , oppress and persecute their opponents.
Like the ICE detention centers, the Nazi system started small and then metastasized like a cancer, according to the Wiener Holocaust Library.
Initially there were so-called SA camps. (Sturmabteilung (SA), or “Brownshirts,” was the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing). After the Night of Long Knives in 1934, the SS and Heinrich Himmler shut down the SA camps and consolidated control of all camps in Germany. Himmler and the SS used Dachau, an original SS camp, as a blueprint for all camps. From 1934 onwards, the SS developed and then operated the camp system, which lasted until Germany’s defeat in 1945.
The SS started building major camps, beginning with Sachsenhausen in 1936, then Buchenwald in 1937, Flossenbürg and Mauthausen in 1938 and Ravensbrück for women in 1939. Political prisoners were the first inmates. Then people with previous criminal convictions. Next were the so-called “asocials”, such as Roma, homosexuals, prostitutes, the homeless and the “work-shy”. The mass imprisonment of Jews began in 1938 after the Anschluss and Kristallnacht.
As the Second World War began in earnest, foreign citizens from newly occupied countries such as Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands began to be imprisoned , followed by Soviet prisoners of war (POW’s) after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Those who believe U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can and will be restrained under the Trump administration might want to stop and reconsider.
With an administration where cruelty is the point, it can happen here.
There’s so much money sloshing around in American politics a lot of questionable activities get overlooked, like the sweet thing Virginia lobbyist Robert J. “Rob” Catron has going on.
Robert J. “Rob” Catron
A native of South Florida and a graduate of Florida State University, Catron worked as Chief of Staff for Rep. Ed. Schrock, a conservative Virginia Republican, during 2001 – 2003. He later joined the Arlington, VA-based lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay, where he’s now a Partner. According to the firm, he is “a proud veteran of the United States Army Reserve” and “has successfully managed or consulted on more than 50 winning political campaigns for federal, state and local offices”.
On December 4, 2023, Catron registered Ranger PAC, a political action committee, with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Based in Athens, Georgia, the PAC says its mission is to support the election of “highly accomplished conservative military veterans to Congress to defend the Constitution and get America squared away”.
The focus on veterans is an exploitation of the fact that although public trust in many institutions is in retreat, the public generally still has high confidence in veterans as effective leaders in civic life.
Ranger PAC’s treasurer is Paul Kilgore, CEO of Professional Data Services Inc (PDS), a political financial consulting company in Athens he founded in 1999 that is a leading compliance firm in Republican politics. In 2024, Kilgore represented more than 157 Republican candidates.
From January 1, 2025 to November 30, 2025, Catron’s Ranger PAC raised $1,394,894.74, according to its filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the same period, it spent $1,353,836.73.
The problem is that, in a deliberate assault on trust, Catron’s Ranger PAC spent just $69,500, 5% of its total spending, on aspiring or serving politicians. That’s right, a measly 5%. The rest, 95%, went to fundraising and administrative expenses.
Although there’s no legal minimum percentage of money raised that a PAC must donate to candidates, legitimate PACs generally spend less than a quarter of their donations on fundraising, with many spending considerably less.
Charity Navigator, an independent non-profit organization that evaluates U.S. charities on their financial health, accountability and transparency, encourages nonprofits to spend no more than 30% combined on administrative and fundraising costs. Organizations earning the highest scores spend less than 10 cents to raise $1 (a 10% ratio).
In Ranger PAC’s case, it added insult to injury: 5 the 19 politicians who received donations from January 1, 2025 to November 30, 2025 weren’t even veterans.[1]
The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust, calls PACs like Ranger PAC “Scam PACS”. They purport to raise money for political and social causes, but spend most of the money they raise from unsuspecting donors on fundraising, salaries and overhead.
In 2015, Politico reported, for example, that a PAC called the Black Republican PAC spent less than 1 percent of the $700,000 it raised on contributions to candidates or ads supporting them, according to government filings.
The FBI warns: “Scam PACs are fraudulent political action committees designed to reroute political contributions for personal financial gain. This is a federal crime—and can be costly to victims who thought they were making legitimate campaign contributions.”
If most of the money Ranger PAC raised didn’t go to candidates, where did it go?
$19,641.81 went to Paul Kilgore’s Professional Data Services Inc for “PAC Compliance Consulting”.
Most of the rest went primarily to enriching 10 firms involved in fundraising[2] , some of them with shadowy histories.
The website for Better Mousetrap Digital, which Ranger PAC paid $25,291.33, says it “is the premier digital fundraising consulting firm for Republicans…with decades of experience spanning from state house campaigns to the White House”.
Better Mousetrap Digital’s founder is Jack Daly. The company’s website doesn’t note that in December 2023, Daly was sentenced to 4 months’ imprisonment for conspiring to (i) commit mail fraud by defrauding thousands of conservative political donors out of money and (ii) lie to the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”). He was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine, along with two separate payments of $69,978.37 for restitution and forfeiture.
Daly emerged from federal custody, nevertheless, to re-establish himself as a top Republican Party campaign fundraiser. NOTUS reported in Oct. 2025 that dozens of federal-level Republican political committees — including the Republican National Committee, numerous congressional committees and campaign operations tied to President Donald Trump — had together spent nearly $18 million on digital fundraising, donor lists and other services from Better Mousetrap Digital.
The FBI says it is actively looking for Scam PACs that only spend money on telemarketing and junk mail. It urges Americans targeted by a scam PAC to contact their local FBI office and ask to speak to an election crimes coordinator.
Unfortunately, scam PACs have been around for a while.
“Since the tea party burst into the political landscape in 2009, the conservative movement has been plagued by an explosion of PACs that critics say exist mostly to pad the pockets of the consultants who run them,” Politico wrote in 2014. “They collect large piles of small checks that, taken together, add up to enough money to potentially sway a Senate race. But the PACs plow most of their cash back into payments to consulting firms for additional fundraising efforts.”
A POLITICO analysis of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission covering the 2014 cycle found 33 PACs that courted small donors with tea party-oriented email and direct-mail appeals raised $43 million, but spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals.
In 2016, two Democratic FEC commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Ann M. Ravel, urged their colleagues to take action against scam PACs, but there’s been little follow-up. On January 31, 2025, President Trump sent a brief letter to Weintraub firing her “effective immediately” as a FEC Commissioner and Chair. Weintraub challenged her dismissal, but is no longer serving on the commission. Ravel resigned from the FEC in February 2017. Weintraub has not been replaced, denying the FEC a quorum for votes.
During 2002 – 2018, Virginia political operative Scott B. Mackenzie served as treasurer of 12 PACs that spent 68% of the money they raised on fundraising, wages and administration. But he paid a price. In 2020, a Federal District Judge sentenced him to 12 months and one day in prison for making false statements to the FEC in relation to his association with the PACs. Mackenzie also had to pay $172,200 in restitution.
“If the Justice Department was seeking to send a message to others tempted to get into the ‘scam PAC’ game, that message came through loud and clear,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at the Akerman law. “These are not victimless crimes and people will go to prison for them.”
It looks like Catron hasn’t gotten that message, even though he’s been in trouble before.
In June 2021, he was indicted by a Virginia Beach grand jury on 10 counts of making false statements and election fraud. He avoided prison when he pleaded no contest to three election-related charges. The charges stemmed from a petition scandal during a Republican congressman’s ultimately losing 2018 campaign for a second term in Congress representing a coastal Virginia district. Catron was accused of being involved in an effort to get a third-party spoiler candidate on the ballot with petitions using forged signatures.
Catron received a three-year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay court costs and fines after entering the plea to three counts of neglect of election duty.
With his Ranger PAC antics, maybe it’s time to bring morally hollow Robert J. “Rob” Catron back to court.
[1] Recipients of Ranger PAC donations, January 1, 2025 – November 30, 2025
Donation Recipient
Donation ($)
Service
Matt Van Epps, Tennessee
10,000
Army
Michael Whatley, N. Carolina
5,000
Not a veteran
Ronny Jackson, Texas
8,500
Navy
Derrick Van Orden, Wisconsin
5,000
Navy
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
5,000
Army
Zach Nunn, Iowa
5,000
Air Force
Gabe Evans, Colorado
5,000
Army
Tom Barrett, Michigan
5,000
Army
Stewart Whitson, Virginia
1,000
Army
Dan Butierez, Arizona
1,000
Not a veteran
Jen Kiggans, Virginia
5,000
Navy
Ryan Zinke, Montana
5,000
Navy
Pat Harrigan, N. Carolina
2,000
Army
Nick Lalota, New York
1,000
Navy
Ken Calvert, California
1,000
Not a veteran
Warren Davidson, Ohio
1,000
Army
Abraham Hamadeh, Arizona
2,000
Army
Randy Fine, Florida
1,000
Not a veteran
Jimmy Patronis, Florida
1,000
Not a veteran
[2] Recipient / percent of total disbursements / Total disbursement
A January 2, 2026 PBS NewsHour interview with Richard Grenell, President Trump’s choice to lead the now renamed Trump-Kennedy Center was a classic lesson in evasiveness.
According to The New Yorker, Kennedy Center staff and others often liken Grenell to Grendel, the “powerful demon, a prowler through the dark” in Beowulf. In his PBS interview, he showed he has another talent.
Richard Grenell
Co-Anchor Amna Nawaz led off with a direct question, asking him to respond to a report that a number of artists had chosen to cancel or pull out of performances at the Center because of the president’s takeover of the Center’s board and the renaming of the Kennedy Center.
“Chocolate milk,” Grenell replied.
Well, not exactly.
That’s how I characterize non-answers.
Grenell might as well have said “chocolate milk” because his response completely ignored the question and immediately veered off into an allegation that NewsHour had consistently failed to cover the Center’s finances.
“At the Trump-Kennedy Center, we have 19 unions. It’s incredibly expensive to go and put on performances,” he whined. “We cannot have unpopular programming that doesn’t pay the bills.”
“How about ticket sales at the Center.,” Nawas asked. ‘Are ticket sales down? Is that confirmed or not?”
Grenell’s response. “I find it to be outrageous that PBS is not reporting on the phenomenon that arts institutions have been having for decades. Since President Trump has arrived at the now Trump-Kennedy Center, we have raised more than $130 million, blowing away all other fund-raising, and that’s corporate donors who are coming back because they trust the programming.”
In other words, “Chocolate milk”.
And so it went, on and on.
Nawas said, “Viewership for the Kennedy Center Honors were down dramatically. Does that — as a steward of this institution, does all of this, the backlash, the headlines about artists pulling out, the fact that so few people paid attention to the Honors, does that worry you?”
Grenell: “If you go to CBS, they will tell you that the CBS Trump-Kennedy Center Honors this year tied for number one in its demographic.” In other words, it did well with a specific segment of the tv audience in that time period, not total viewers.
In other words, “Chocolate milk”.
Politicians have long evaded media questions, but Trump and his minions have raised it to an art form, figuring there’s little or no downside these days to giving a word salad answer or sequeing to a completely unrelated topic.
Donald Trump himself is the role model for his administration in this behavior.
His stream-of-consciousness speaking style, involving long seemingly unscripted statements that veer from topic to topic, is a practiced deceit allowing him to avoid directly answering questions. He has referred to his meandering speaking style as the purposeful “weave”. In his case, however, it could just as well be a rambling sign of muddled thinking and cognitive decline.
This is a frightening sign of where we are headed as a country. It reminds me of the extermination and concentration camps established in occupied Poland as part of the “Final Solution” during the Holocaust. Are ICE officers going to oversee these American warehouses like the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss in The Zone of Interest (2023), enjoying their idyllic life right beside the horror?
Piece by piece, President Donald Trump is dismantling America’s representation and reputation around the world.
With about 80 U.S. ambassador posts worldwide already vacant, the Trump administration has abruptly recalled nearly 30 career ambassadors at U.S. embassies around the world. They’ve been directed to vacate their posts by Jan. 15 or 16, 2026. Most of the affected ambassadors are at diplomatic posts in Africa, but the removals are also impacting posts in Europe,
Africa was hit the hardest, with about a dozen ambassadors or chiefs of mission recalled from Niger, Uganda, Senegal, Somalia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritius, Nigeria, Gabon, Congo, Burundi, Cameroon, and Rwanda. In the Middle East, heads of mission were recalled from Egypt and Algeria. European chiefs of mission were also recalled from Slovakia, Montenegro, Armenia and North Macedonia.
A senior department official told the Journal the recall was part of a standard process to reassess ambassadors in any administration and that it’s the president’s right to ensure he has envoys in place who advance his foreign-policy agenda.
The damage done by the vacancies is compounded by the questionable quality of some of Trump’s ambassadors who are already confirmed .
For example, Herschel Walker, a former professional football player who ran unsuccessfully as the Republican party’s nominee in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Georgia, is Trump’s s ambassador to the Bahamas. Then there’s Charles Kushner, a disbarred attorney who in 2005 was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering, and who happens to be the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Charles Kushner is Trump’s Ambassador to France and Monaco. And there’s Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump’s Ambassador to Greece. She’s a former Fox News personality and Donald Trump Jr.s ex- fiancée.
The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) , which represents the U.S. foreign service and career diplomats, said the recall represents “a steady erosion of norms, transparency, and professional independence in the Foreign Service.”
“Abrupt, unexplained recalls reflect the same pattern of institutional sabotage and politicization our survey data shows is already harming morale, effectiveness, and U.S. credibility abroad,” AFSA said.
The United States is going to pay a steep price for President Trump’s reckless moves undermining our country’s diplomatic authority.
“Go back to where you came from”, he said to the Somali immigrants in Minnesota, employing an insulting slur unacceptable in polite society.
Last week Trump said on his social media channel, Truth Social, he’d send Somalis “back to where they came from.” Yesterday he said Somalis in the U.S. should “go back to where they came from and fix it.”
A person familiar with Trump’s plans told the Associated Press federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S.
At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump said Somalis “contribute nothing.”
“I don’t want them in our country,” a snarling Trump told reporters. “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
I remember hearing that taunt directed at minorities by racist know-nothings in my youth in the 1950s, but I thought people had long ago been shamed from uttering it.
Trump, however, seems to enjoy denigrating “the other”.
Trump’s own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cites “Go back to where you came from,” as an example of unlawful workplace conduct, along with the use of “insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets”.
I suppose in some respects nobody should really be surprised by Trump’s insults. That’s his modus operandi. Demean and slander his opponents, particularly those he deems not “real” Americans. And his supporters often embrace his scurrilous attacks.
He even goes after members of Congress with abandon. He has described Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn), who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
And Trump’s recent explicit use of hateful speech is not original or unprecedented. It was a feature, not a bug, of his campaigns for office.
An analysis published by Presidential Studies Quarterly[1] , cited by the National Library of Medicine, concluded that “no other comparable candidate of either major US party has ever approached the level of negativity and vitriol toward racial/ethnic minorities that Trump did.”
A Washington Post column today by George Will is headlined “A sickening moral slum of an administration”.
Indeed.
[1] Çinar I, Stokes S, Uribe A. Presidential rhetoric and populism. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 2020;50(2):240–263. doi: 10.1111/psq.12656. [DOI] [Google Scholar]
Black Friday is probably going to turn into Bleak Friday for some credit users at Oregon retailers.
“When it Comes to West Coast Furniture Stores, We Have the Best Prices in Home Furniture,” Mor Furniture says on its website. On Nov. 26, the site is highlighting: “IN-STORE ONLY. No interest with equal monthly payments for 61 months on purchases of $6000 or more made with your Mor Furniture credit card. Equal monthly payments required for 61 months. Learn more.”
If you’re not careful, it could be a costly trap
Let’s say you buy furniture that costs $6,800. The monthly payment due for 61 months, Mor told me, would be $112.00. BUT, if you still owe any of the $6800 at the end of the 61 months, even $1, Mor Furniture will charge you interest on the full $6800 at a 35.99% rate starting from the purchase date.
Do the math. The total interest on an amortized $6800 loan paid off in 61 months at an annual interest rate of 35.99% would be approximately $7,422.39, more than the cost of the furniture itself. In other words, that furniture will cost you $6,800 + $7,422.39, a total of $14,222.
Shop at Key Home Furnishings and you will encounter the same problem if you don’t pay off your entire purchase price in the time required.“No interest will be charged on the promo balance if you pay it off, in full, within the promo period.,” Key says. “If you do not, interest will be charged on the promo balance from the purchase date. The promo balance is equal to the promo purchase amount and any related optional debt cancellation fees. “
Wayfair credit card financing also offers 0% interest options for a set period (e.g., 6, 12, or 24 months) on qualifying purchases, but if you don’t pay the balance in full before the promotional period ends, you will be charged retroactive interest on the entire original purchase amount at a high APR.
A perceptive consumer observed on Reddit, “One really has to study a business structure. They aren’t furniture dealers first, they are credit companies first, predatory lenders that have attached a tangible item or service to their scheme.”
It’s worth noting that deferred financial schemes are not restricted to furniture stores. Numerous other retailers offer it, too.
For example, Car Toys, a specialty car audio and mobile electronics retailer, promotes “No interest if paid in full within promotional period” but “Interest will be charged to your account from the purchase date if their purchase balance is not paid in full within the promotional period.”
Window company Renewal by Andersen can trap consumers, too. NO MONEY DOWN, NO MONTHLY PAYMENTS, NO INTEREST FOR 12 MONTHS* its website says. Then it adds, “*Interest is billed during promo period but will be waived if the amount financed is paid in full before promo period expires.’
Anybody can be caught in these credit schemes, but the people most likely to be vulnerable are consumers with lower credit scores who suffer a job loss or medical emergency that makes it hard to pay off the balance, triggering the retroactive interest charge.
The now beleaguered federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau cautions all consumers to know the difference betweenzero interest and deferred interest, because the differences can have big effects on your wallet.
A zero percent interest promotion will not add interest based on the balance of your purchase during the promotional period. If you still have an unpaid balance when the promotional period is over, you will start to pay interest on the remaining balance only from the date the promotional period ends.
In contrast, some retailers offer financing such as “No interest if paid in full in 12 months.” That’s when you need to be wary because it usually means the promotion is a deferred interest offer.
The largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades is now operating, with nearly 20% of the Navy’s deployed warships in the region, according to a Stars and Stripes’ analysis. The deployment also includes the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Base New River. The 22nd MEU consists of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 (Reinforced), Combat Logistics Battalion 26 and the Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.
Other American aircraft, including an AC-130J Ghostrider, an Air Force gunship designed for close air support, air interdiction and armed reconnaissance, have been spotted operating in El Salvador. The aircraft, known for being the most heavily armed gunship in history, “plays a critical role in supporting ground operations, providing close air support to troops in contact, conducting armed reconnaissance missions, and engaging enemy targets” according to The Aviationist.
An AC-130J Ghostrider being refueled
The New York Times has reported that U.S. officials ran a war game during President Trump’s first term to assess what the Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s fall might unleash. “The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.”
Nevertheless, asked if he would rule out U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, Trump said on Monday “No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything.”
And then, of course, no matter what happens, will it matter? Mary Speck, former executive director of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission, wrote today in the Dispatch, “The United States—for all its military might—cannot defeat “narco-terrorism” unilaterally by ousting a corrupt and brutal dictator. Whatever the end game of the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, the region’s drug cartels have nothing to fear.”.
“What is the balance of risk? ,” opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote in November 19s New York Times. “Unintended consequences must be weighed against the predictable risks of inaction…And Trump’s hesitation will be read, especially in Moscow and Beijing, as a telling signal of weakness that can only embolden them, just as President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did.”
“Any morally serious person should want this to end,” Stephens opined. “The serious question is whether American intervention would make things even worse.”
As Puck observed on Nov. 20, “Trump’s plan for Venezuela may be a mystery even to himself. “I think he thinks about what will make him look tough, but he doesn’t think much beyond that,” said John Bolton. “He never does.”
What does the Trump administration want to achieve in this dramatic effort and what will be the cost? America waits.
U.S. Forces Now in the Caribbean
Up to 15,000 U.S. troops are in the area.
USS Newport News SSN-750Four F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadrons 31, 37, 87, and 213 from embarked Carrier Air Wing Eight aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), and a U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress operate as a joint force with the Gerald R. Ford, Nov. 13, 2025. US Navy photo
The “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana, Va.
The “Ragin Bulls” of VFA 37 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Golden Warriors” of VFA 87 – F/A-18E – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Black Lions” of VFA 213 – F/A-18F – from Naval Air Station Oceana.
The “Gray Wolves” of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 142 – EA-18G – from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.
The “Bear Aces” of Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 124 – E-2D – from Naval Air Station Norfolk, Va.
The “Rawhides” of Fleet Logistics Squadron (VRC) 40 Det. – C-2A – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.
The “Spartans” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 70 – MH-60R – from Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla.
The “Tridents” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 9 – MH-60S – from Naval Air Station Norfolk.
Carrier Air Wing 8
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) with 9 embarked squadrons of Carrier Air Wing EightArleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyerUSS Bainbridge (DDG 96)Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan (DDG 72)Air and missile defense command ship USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81)
Littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS-13)
Guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG – 70)
Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7)
Amphibious transport dock ship USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28)
Amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD-17)
Guided missile destroyer USS Gravely (DDG-107)
Guided missile destroyer USS Stockdale (DDG-106)
“Militarily, the table is set quite effectively for air strikes,” retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who led U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, from 2006 to 2009, recently told Task & Purpose. “Now it’s up to [President Trump] to decide.”
State Rep. Jim Murphy says the bill was prompted by The Independent’s story about a Nebraska veteran who gave 35 times this year to Eigel’s campaign for St. Charles County executive.
_________________________
Politicians running deceptive political fundraising campaigns can’t count on hiding in the dark.
A case in point.
Earlier this year I started getting bombarded with high-intensity inflammatory emails, such as one urging me to support President Trump’s use of the Insurrection Act and another telling me, “Without mandatory voter ID in ALL 50 states, your vote will be replaced by an illegal alien”. And, of course, every email asked for a contribution.
I noticed none of the emails actually listed a political candidate associated with it, just something called Bill PAC. It turned out BILL PAC is a political action committee associated with William C. (Bill) Eigel, a conservative former state senator from the 23rd District in Missouri’s St. Charles County who’s now seeking the post of St. Charles County Executive. Some more digging revealed he’s running a deceptive national fundraising campaign targeting vulnerable seniors.
Those stories came to the attention of Rudi Keller, Deputy Editor of The Missouri Independent, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization covering state government, politics and policy. It’s an affiliate of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. The Capitol Chronicle in Oregon is part of the network.
Keller took a more exhaustive look at Eigel’s BILL PAC and wrote a story that ran today in the Missouri Independent and The States Newsroom. His in-depth story further exposed the deceptive tactics of Eigel’s BILL PAC:
Former State Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, shown in a 2024 photo, is using recurring donations from across the country to finance his bid for St. Charles County executive (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).
Keller exposed how people across the country, overwhelmingly seniors, are being lured into contributing to BILL PAC, unaware that it is supporting a local Missouri Republican, not a national conservative campaign.
A retired man from Reston, VA, a consistent donor to Republican state and federal candidates and committees, made an astonishing 65 separate online donations to BILL PAC, according to reports submitted to the Missouri Ethics Commission in 2025.
Keller tracked down some donors who had unwittingly committed to monthly recurring donations.
A retired woman in Texas has contributed $1,205 in 74 separate donations since December. All are about the same dates each month.
A 92-year-old Korean War veteran from Nebraska named Russell Wood, made 35 donations totaling $1,050 over the last year to Bill Eigel’s campaign for St. Charles County executive. But Wood told Keller he has never heard of Eigel or set foot in St. Charles County and had no idea he had made so many donations to Eigel’s campaign.
People running for public office at the federal, state and local level always run the risk of taking an “ends justifies the means” approach to campaigning, observes Judy Nadler at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“The conduct of the campaign itself can say a lot about the ethical principles a candidate brings to public life,” she says. That’s something Eigel, Missourians and all voters should ponder.
The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC), a Bellevue, Washington-based organization that says it is focused on electing “conservative, freedom-oriented candidates to public office”, is offering supporters a Liberty Cross Award Medal.[1] The medal , which features a bust of President Trump, bears an uncanny resemblance to a bronze Nazi War Merit Cross featuring a swastika.
Liberty Cross Award Medal Nazi War Merit Cross
AmeriPAC emails tell recipients that those who have earned the Liberty Cross Award Medal have demonstrated:
To receive their medal, all awardees have to do is fill out a short survey and make a donation of $10 or more. The message to me included a pre-checked box to make my contribution a monthly recurring donation.
The survey questions, reminiscent of the “loyalty questionnaire” administered by the US Government to Japanese Nikkei citizens and immigrants being held in WWII concentration camps, include:
Are you a steadfast patriot, who shows VALOR in the defense of truth?
Do you pledge LOYALTY to the America-First mission?
Do you STAND with President Trump against the Radical Left and all their plots and schemes?
Do you LOVE President Trump and all that he is doing to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
“At AmeriPAC, we want to personally restore our country for freedom-loving patriots like you,” the medal appeal says.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) lists two similarly named fundraising committees: (1) AMERIPAC: THE FUND FOR A GREATER AMERICA, formed in 1992 to help elect Democratic leaders to the United States Congress. ID: C00271338; (2) The American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC) Registered with the Federal Election Commission on August 24, 1980. ID: C99002396.
The second PAC is the one awarding the Liberty Cross Award Medal. According to the FEC, this PAC has raised $2,399,916.53 and spent $1,446,308.76 in the first three-quarters of 2025. Almost all of its spending has gone towards fundraising.
About 41% of the money spent on fundraising, $595,618.82, went to Red Spark Strategy, a Republican-leaning Arlington, VA.-based digital consulting and marketing agency. Another 11.05%, $159,876.80 , went to Frontline Strategies LLC and 10.63%, $153,726.29, went to Better Mousterap Digital LLC.
[1] A War Merit Cross Second Class without Swords. (Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse ohne Schwertern). Instituted October 18th, 1939 (1939-1945 issue). Constructed of bronze, with a fixed loop and ring for suspension, consisting of a Maltese Cross with pebbled arms, the obverse with a central wreathed mobile swastika.
ThinkingOregon 