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In July 2011, a 22-year-old woman arrived at the Calexico checkpoint on the Mexico–California border carrying a U.S. passport with a navy-blue cover. Her eight-month pregnancy and Sinaloa accent were hard to hide. A customs agent asked routine questions: where she had come from, where she was headed, and what she was carrying. Despite her answers and the document she presented, he sent her for a secondary, more thorough inspection. Other federal officers meticulously searched her belongings and the contents of her cellphones. Minutes later, once the rigorous procedure was complete, they allowed her into the country.
© Mary Altaffer (AP)
Édgar Vázquez Silva’s worst fears came true. His boss at the Stone County sheriff’s office in Mississippi called him and asked him to turn in his badge and uniform. The order was clear: all department officers had to be U.S. citizens or, at minimum, permanent residents.
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The music industry has once again been forced to dance to a tune set by drug trafficking. Ismael Zambada Sicairos, the subject of several narcocorridos (a subgenre of corrido, a type of Mexican ballad, that glorifies or narrates the lives of drug traffickers and organized crime), is now accused of being the head of a sophisticated criminal network that, through organizing concerts in Baja California and other front-business activities, allegedly served to launder money generated illicitly across the border by Los Mayos, the Sinaloa Cartel faction he has led for two years.
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Eliminate the death penalty for 563 inmates in California and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The proposal now being considered by Governor Gavin Newsom has been put to a statewide vote twice and came very close to passing.
In the 2024 elections, the Latino vote took center stage, proving decisive for Donald Trump’s victory. In less than a month, their vote could determine whether Republicans keep control of both chambers of Congress or lose it in the midterms. Given that the electorate’s top concern is the economy, the outlook does not bode well for the red party.
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President Donald Trump said it without weighing the possible electoral consequences for Republican candidates in California, less than a month before the midterm elections. Far from generating laughter or support for his war with Iran, his comments have raised concern and could affect the vote in a state governed by Democrats since 2011. During a rally in Nebraska on Monday, the president said Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, two of the largest cities in the United States, calling it a “small price” to pay to eliminate what he says is the threat posed by the Iranian regime.
© Nathan Howard (REUTERS)
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 06, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” said San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, Monday night after President Donald Trump’s rambling speech at a rally in Nebraska included a particularly violent mention of the California city.
Gloria was among several Democratic political leaders who were incensed after Trump—moments after predicted the Republican Party would see a “tremendous victory” in the November 3 midterm elections—suggested that he would not object to an Iranian military or nuclear attack on San Diego and Los Angeles.
The president said that soaring prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.”
Trump on Iran: Let 'em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it's a small price to pay pic.twitter.com/Fc4BcjVDKj
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) October 6, 2026
He warned that Iran could “take out a city,” before adding that he would “let them” attack the two deep-blue cities—home to a collective 5.2 million people, with more than 20 million residents in the surrounding areas
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said at the rally in Grand Island. “This is a very small price to pay… It’s gonna be over very soon.”
The crowd responded to Trump’s comments with laughter and cheers. The president has frequently made Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles, Chicago, and his own hometown of New York City the targets of rhetorical attacks. He has also targeted those cities with the deployment of armed federal agents as part of his mass deportation agenda.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat whose name has been floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, condemned Trump’s remarks as “deranged and dangerous.”
“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” said Newsom, who later criticized Trump’s vice president and secretary of state for not speaking out against the comments.
“The SILENCE from JD Vance and Marco Rubio today is deafening,” said the governor.
Gloria added that San Diego, which is home to major military installations, “is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused Trump of compromising the safety of the nation’s second-largest city.
“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” said Bass. “In the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.”
Jim Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in California’s 48th District, which lies in San Diego, was also quick to distance himself from the president’s comments.
Some observers claimed the president had simply been speaking in an “especially confusing style,” as journalist Daniel Dale suggested, and did not intend to suggest that the two cities could be acceptable collateral damage.
“Of course you can say it’s inappropriate regardless for the president to casually float the possibility of a city being wiped out,” he added.
Trump’s comments came days after it was reported that the Pentagon is prepared to send thousands more troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East, as talks between the US and Iran remain stalled. Gas prices remain elevated, at $4.36 per gallon on average, and nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Associated Press poll in June said they disapproved of how Trump had handled the war, which he joined Israel in starting in February without congressional approval.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) had a succinct response to Trump’s remarks, referring to the constitutional amendment that allows members of a president’s Cabinet to remove him from office on the ground that they cannot fulfill the duties of the president.
“Twenty-fifth amendment NOW,” said Padilla.
The U.S. midterm elections will not only determine who will occupy the Congressional seats and governorships up for grabs in November. In several states, voters will also find ballot measures seeking to amend laws, approve tax changes, or add new provisions to state constitutions.
© Ryan Murphy (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
In the early 1980s, the surname Zambada did not openly resonate in the drug-trafficking world. That allowed Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, patriarch of the criminal dynasty, to move through California without worrying too much about hiding his tracks. He was 32 then and beginning to weave a network of warehouses, transporters, distributors, customers, and money launderers. Over time, the Los Angeles metropolitan area would become the Sinaloa Cartel’s main hub in the United States for drug distribution and collection of illicit proceeds. El Mayo has been serving a life sentence imposed by a New York judge since July.
For Michelle Joy, lead singer of Cannons, learning to live with pain was not a new sensation.
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Germany and California parade as climate superpowers – yet both import energy, destroy industry and hand supply chains to Beijing. Western virtue, says Tilak Doshi, is made in Chinese coal-fired factories.
The post Beijing’s Useful Idiots: Germany, California and the Green Road to Chinese Supremacy appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Solar power is surging across America. This infographic ranks the top U.S. states for utility-scale solar generation, based on the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas leads the nation in total solar output, followed by California and Florida. See which states are driving America’s solar energy boom and how solar fits into each state’s overall electricity mix.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
(Click on the image to enlarge)
If there is one thing no one can deny about Donald Trump it is that he is a lucky man. The president has beaten the odds more than once. Notably, when he left the presidency in January 2021 after the shameful assault on the Capitol, his political career seemed to have hit rock bottom. But not only was he acquitted in a second impeachment trial, and spared from an AR-15 rifle round that came within millimeters of blowing off his head (to name just two examples of his extreme luck); he also easily defeated Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
© Kevin Lamarque (REUTERS)
By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 2, 2026
Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiologist and sports physician, said her decision to follow the data during the COVID-19 pandemic came at a steep professional price.
Her research challenged policies on school closures, masking and COVID-19 vaccines. She said the fallout included losing her position at the University of California, Davis, being dropped from an NPR interview and being fired from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Høeg said her experience exposed the unwillingness of universities, media and public health institutions to adapt when research conflicted with their accepted narratives.
In an interview this week with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker on The DisInformation Chronicle, Høeg said institutions too often treated the accepted narrative as settled and then dismissed or attacked people who questioned it.
That approach did more than distort the public discussion about COVID-19, Høeg said. It also created a scientific and institutional culture that could affect how other medical questions are handled long after the pandemic.
For Høeg, the solution is simple: Scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads.
“It’s a core belief of mine that you have to be objective when you’re doing scientific studies,” she said. “Otherwise, you just shouldn’t do them. It’s pointless if you’re not willing to be objective.”
‘I … didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in’
During the pandemic, Høeg published 30 to 40 papers on COVID-19 transmission, masking, youth sports, vaccine risk-benefit, pregnancy, long COVID, visitor restrictions and testing.
Some of her research challenged widely accepted claims.
One study found little evidence of COVID-19 transmission among children in Wisconsin schools, which was consistent with data from Europe. Another examined myocarditis risk in boys after their second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose and found the risks outweighed the benefits in boys who didn’t have underlying health conditions.
Høeg said she didn’t initially understand the professional risks she was taking by challenging the prevailing narrative.
“There was sort of a hesitancy to do this sort of research because I think people were afraid for their careers,” she said. “I actually was blessed with having recently moved from Denmark and didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in by doing these sorts of studies.”
At the time, Høeg was conducting research at the University of California, Davis.
She said the university received calls, including from Nature magazine, complaining about her studies on pandemic policies. Eventually, the university asked her not to use her affiliation with the school.
Høeg said the university refused to renew her voluntary position in 2022, after the European Journal of Clinical Investigation published her study on myocarditis risks in boys who received the COVID-19 vaccine.
NPR also dropped an interview with Høeg for “All Things Considered” after she raised concerns about masking children during outdoor sports.
In a pre-interview discussion with NPR, she told the outlet, “We don’t have evidence that these masks work to prevent transmission. … Bottom line is, we shouldn’t be doing these unproven things to children that are harmful.”
Soon after, NPR told Høeg she was no longer needed for the interview.
“It does say a lot about our universities and institutions because it’s like they had been brainwashed to an extent to believe what the media was saying rather than actually look at the data,” Høeg said.
‘They repeated the same wording … even when the data didn’t back it up’
In 2022, Høeg and her colleagues conducted a follow-up analysis of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on school mask mandates.
Høeg said their analysis used a larger dataset and a longer time period and reached the opposite conclusion about the relationship between mask mandates and COVID-19 transmission among children.
The team’s submission to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) was rejected. Høeg said reviewers described the submission as “rife with polemics.”
“Well, maybe it’s polarizing if you disagree with it,” Høeg said.
The rejection unearthed an underlying problem at the CDC, according to Høeg.
“They have a scientific agenda,” she said. “And so as soon as you have a scientific agenda, science has been thrown out the window. Science doesn’t have an agenda other than to find the truth.”
A 2024 analysis by Høeg and colleagues examined 77 mask studies published in the MMWR beginning in 2020. According to Høeg, 75% of the studies said masks were effective, while only 14% reported statistically significant results and none were randomized studies.
One finding especially stood out to her: She said 5% of the studies found masks were connected to higher infection rates, yet “they still concluded that masks worked.”
“They repeated the same wording over and over again in each of the studies, that ‘masks are necessary to decrease the spread’ and ‘masks are critical in controlling the case rates of COVID-19,’” she said. “They use the same sort of wording even when the data didn’t back it up at all.”
‘Why are we demonizing people for looking into this?’
Those concerns followed Høeg into the FDA in late 2025 when she was named acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
A leaked memo from then-FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad said career staff had linked at least 10 child deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine between 2021 and 2024.
Høeg said she reviewed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports and found that investigations involving medical records and autopsies had already been conducted.
“My question at the time was … why are these not being made public?” Høeg told Thacker.
Høeg said news leaked that she would present information about the deaths and their possible association with COVID-19 vaccines. She said the media response focused on portraying her as an “anti-vaxxer” rather than asking why the deaths had been investigated but not publicly disclosed.
“If we have these sorts of deaths happening in children due to medical products of any kind, why are we sitting on them for years?” she asked. “That’s the take-home I want people to have from this.”
She also questioned why people who investigate potential safety problems are attacked for trying to expose the dangers.
“Why are we demonizing people for looking into this? … Isn’t that what the public wants?” she asked.
‘The deep state really is a thing’
In May, just days after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, Høeg said she arrived at work to find media reports claiming she had resigned — something she said she knew nothing about.
FDA lawyers later asked her to resign, but she refused to sign the letter. She was subsequently locked out of the agency’s systems and escorted from the building.
Høeg said she never received a performance-based explanation for her termination. She also said the person identified as the author of her termination memo later denied writing or seeing it.
According to Høeg, agency lawyers told her the order came from “way above their pay grade.”
The experience changed how she viewed other departures from the agency. “It opened my eyes to the fact that maybe a number of the people who I thought had resigned really had not resigned,” she said.
“The deep state really is a thing,” she added.
‘Women who want to get pregnant … should be told about these risks’
For Høeg, the concerns she encountered during the COVID-19 era are not limited to COVID-19.
In 2025, she helped organize an FDA panel examining potential risks associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, during pregnancy.
The American Psychiatric Association criticized the panel for what it called “misinterpretation and unbalanced viewpoints.” Høeg said the media also portrayed any discussion of potential risks as “misinformation about SSRI use” and a signal that depression wasn’t being taken seriously.
According to Høeg, the panel discussed risks already addressed in FDA labeling and scientific research, including miscarriage, premature birth, postpartum hemorrhage, congenital heart defects and neonatal adaptation syndrome.
“This should not be controversial that women who want to get pregnant and who are pregnant should be told about these risks,” she said.
She also warned about the lack of ongoing monitoring of drug safety.
“The FDA is not actively investigating the safety of these products in pregnancy or at all after the initial trials are done,” she said.
Høeg said the discussion should not be interpreted as an argument against treating depression. “I don’t think that any of this should be synonymous with not taking depression seriously,” she said. “That’s just nonsense.”
‘There’s just no reporting on this. … People have died taking this drug’
Høeg also discussed Tavneos, the Amgen-manufactured brand name for avacopan, a drug approved to treat a type of blood-vessel inflammation.
While at CDER, Høeg said she raised concerns that the pivotal clinical trial used to approve the drug had included manipulated data.
According to Høeg, at least eight deaths had been attributed to the drug because of liver injury.
The New England Journal of Medicine later retracted the paper detailing the trial, and European regulators withdrew the drug’s authorization. While the FDA has proposed withdrawing Tavneos’ approval, it remains available in the U.S.
Yet, the media barely covered it.
“There’s just no reporting on this,” Høeg said. “People have died taking this drug. … We asked for them to withdraw it from the market, and the media is just totally silent.”
Thacker: ‘There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber’
Høeg said it is troubling that some of the most disputed COVID-19 policies are still treated as settled questions.
“How is this still part of our collective conversation that people … are still saying school closures were necessary and mask mandates were necessary?” she asked.
Thacker said the failure to learn from those policies could have consequences during the next pandemic. People who developed a “false sense of safety from masks” during COVID-19 could mistakenly assume masks will protect them from a more dangerous virus in the future, he said.
Thacker also questioned whether the country understands anything about the COVID-19 vaccines. “There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber,” he said.
Høeg said the problem stems from the widespread failure to reconsider policies when the evidence changed.
“Once the government decided this is what we have to do, they just kept digging in, even though the data didn’t support it,” she said.
“This is why I keep doing these interviews, because it’s important for people to know the truth.”
Watch Høeg on ‘The DisInformation Chronicle’ podcast here:
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
On the day of his sentencing hearing in New York this summer, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada read a letter overflowing with remorse. After a decades-long career in drug trafficking, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel said his goodbyes with a mea culpa for everything he had done, without expanding greatly. Given his expected influence over the regional underworld, he dared to send a message to young people. “Choose a different path,” he said. “There is no honor in violence nor anything lasting in crime; they only bring pain and loss.” It is not known whether his second-born son knew about his father’s letter. But it is fairly clear that, if he did, he paid it no heed.
Five months ago, four excited girls walked into a maximum-security area with their mother wearing the same black T-shirt printed with a photo of their father. Minutes later, he emerged from a building guarded by the military, amid camera flashes and television cameras, and looked at them with moist eyes from the other side of the fence. He could not approach or touch them. He had to respect quarantine, because in a few hours he would board the most powerful crewed rocket in history and head to the Moon. Without speaking, they said everything to each other, and the rest of the world understood them.
© Ashley Landis (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Joel René Cárdenas Carrillo, a Mexican immigrant who became a U.S. citizen and works as a welder, has lived in the United States for more than 25 years. For his father’s birthday, he decided to return to his home state of Colima in Mexico after a long absence. On August 12, as he was preparing to return to California, he went for a walk on a hill and later attended a soccer match held on a field in Manzanillo. But when he left the game in his car, several police patrols blocked his way. Officers detained him, beat him and accused him of stealing fuel, an illegal activity in Mexico known as huachicol. That is the account provided by his wife, Verónica Sánchez.
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