Russell Berman

A friend called today to ask: What's going on with the @WSJ?  In the past few weeks, the paper's op ed page has carried prominent articles by Iran's foreign minister, Tim Walz, Michael Blumenthal (an attack on Trump), and Rahm Emanuel, that latest in a series of articles by Chicago's former mayor and chief of staff for Barack Obama.  All of these, and more, contain misleading and partisan attacks on Donald Trump, with no answers or responses on the page.  The Journal has run so many articles by Rahm Emanuel that readers may conclude that he is the paper's preferred candidate for President.  Long-time readers of the WSJ's editorial page do not open the paper expecting to hear from the likes of Emanuel and Gov. Walz.  Right now, the op ed page is looking more and more like the op ed page of the New York Times.

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly. What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook. Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse. This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s. The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity. I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night. Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war. We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread. Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.

Thank you JD Vance for making yourself unelectable.

Trump Holds Oval Office Summit With Prominent Muslim Leader buff.ly/2tkbfVQ

JD Vance appeases neo-Nazis who insult his wife just to advance his career. He trades his family’s dignity for political power. A man who can't stand up for his family can't stand up for America

Pound for pound, I think he's earned the accolades and is the most effective member of the administration. But that's just not how it works. VPs get an auto-bid. It is what it is. There won't be much of a primary.

This man should be the next President of the United States.

We're glad that people are finally coming around to see Vance is not the answer.

Rubio for President 2028

🚨Politico reports that Marco Rubio is “quietly stacking internal GOP capital” according to Buzz Jacobs’ (senior adviser on Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign) sources in the GOP. “As of today, could Marco Rubio enter the presidential race and be very competitive, even against the vice president? I think the answer is undeniably yes.” 👀👀 Rubio could run…and win.

Al Jazeera is rebranding

Don't let this be Hungary 1956 in Iran.

If your spending any time on X, you can't ignore the fact that @VP had screwed over Maga with his love affair with @TuckerCarlson.