New York Police Department officers encountered Anthony Griffin, 44, brandishing a machete, according to a report from CBS News.

Griffin was "behaving erratically" and calling himself "Lucifer," according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

"The individual refused to comply with at least 20 orders to drop the knife. Officers also attempted to deescalate and offer assistance," she added.

After refusing the orders, Griffin reportedly advanced toward the police officers, prompting one of them to shoot Griffin twice.

Anthony Griffin, the "maniac" (as described by the @nypost) who slashed three elderly people with a machete — while calling himself “Lucifer” — in an unprovoked attack at Grand Central Terminal this morning, and was shot dead by the police. Griffin had 13 prior arrests, including… pic.twitter.com/fntGFdwRsL

— Crime In NYC (@Crime_In_NYC) April 11, 2026

Griffin was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

The victims included an 84-year-old man on the platform, as well as a 65-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman on the 4/5/6 platform.

All three victims were hospitalized upon suffering the severe injuries, but they are each expected to recover.

Tisch said that one of the victims has serious lacerations and a skull fracture, and that police will release body camera footage.

The New York Post reported that passengers were rattled by the incident.

Claudio Delgado, 53, described the chaotic scene.

“I was coming from Connecticut when ‘Boom!’ everyone got down on the floor fast,” he recalled.

"Then the police said, ‘Get outta here! Get outta here fast!’ They said it was somebody with a gun and police were involved too. It’s scary. This is how New York City is now. It’s too much violence in New York City now.”

An unnamed worker at the station described how paramedics "came up with somebody on the stretcher, and they were pumping his chest."

I have been briefed on an incident that occurred at Grand Central Station this morning. Reports indicate a man slashed three people on the platform with a machete. Officers shot the man when he did not drop the machete. He has since been pronounced dead.

I’m grateful to the NYPD…

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 11, 2026

"It’s crazy. You could be on the platform minding your business, and someone had a machete, it’s scary, scary, scary," he added.

Jessica Munoz, who works at a bakery near the entrance to the subway, witnessed people fleeing the scene.

“I was scared, we don’t know what we can do, we just see the people running, and I asked the guy and he said there was a shooting downstairs,” she said.

"It’s scary, we didn’t know what we could do. It’s crazy.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said in an interview with ITV that the Iranian regime has laid naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. officials say Iranian forces seeded the strait with mines last month, however, Iran did not systematically track every placement and, in some cases, deployed mines in ways that allowed them to drift from their original positions, according to The New York Times.

As a result, Iranian authorities now cannot reliably map, locate, or recover all of the weapons they deployed.

The inability to account for the mines has become a key factor in Tehran’s failure to meet demands from the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday suspended a planned U.S. military strike on Iran for two weeks, citing ongoing diplomatic efforts and communications with Pakistani leaders.

He said the pause depends on Iran’s agreement to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have instead pointed to what they describe as “technical limitations,” words that U.S. officials interpret as an acknowledgment that Tehran lacks both the situational awareness and the specialized capability required to conduct rapid mine clearance operations.

U.S. officials estimate Iran possesses between 2,000 and 6,000 naval mines, according to figures that CBS News cited.

A declassified Central Intelligence Agency report from 1984 indicates that some of these munitions carry warheads exceeding 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms), a payload capable of disabling or sinking large commercial and military vessels.

The Strait of Hormuz remains partially open, but Iran has restricted traffic to controlled channels and allowed passage only under conditions that include toll payments and adherence to designated routes.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has repeatedly warned commercial shipping operators that vessels risk striking sea mines outside those corridors, while Iranian-aligned media outlets have published navigational guidance illustrating limited safe passages.

The announcement came Sunday straight from Swalwell himself.

Swalwell admitted to "mistakes in judgement" he's made in the past in a post published on X, before then announcing his intention to "fight" the so-called "false allegations" made against him.

I am suspending my campaign for Governor.

To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.

I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) April 13, 2026

"I am suspending my campaign for Governor. To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past," he wrote.

"I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s."

Reports from CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle published Friday cited four anonymous women as they described in detail the alleged attacks Swalwell committed against them.

Later Friday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffires and Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi both stated that the accusations levied against Swalwell need to be investigated, per Politico.

Swalwell was considered a top contender for Democrats to win the California gubernatorial seat prior to the scandal.

The first such motivation is that since 1979, when Muslim clerics viewing America as the “Great Satan” seized power, the Iranian theocracy and its proxies have done enormous harm to Americans. The earliest example occurred shortly thereafter when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

That longest hostage ordeal in U.S. diplomatic history was followed by the suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in April 1983. That attack, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support, training, and direction, was the first large-scale strike against a U.S. diplomatic facility by Islamist militants.

Signaling a new era of attacks on American targets, that bombing foreshadowed an even worse attack by Hezbollah barely six months later.

In October 1983, Iran supplied the financing, explosives, training, intelligence, and logistical support for the bombing of a Marine barracks also in Beirut, killing 241 soldiers and wounding 128 others. Undeniably carried out by operatives aligned with Hezbollah, it was the deadliest single-day attack on Marines since World War II.

Still another attack by Hezbollah, inspired, supported, and supervised by Iran, occurred in 1996 at the Khobar building complex in Saudi Arabia. It was there that a truck bomb was detonated, killing 19 U.S. Airmen and injuring about 500 others.

But Iran’s proxy-led killing spree of Americans did not end in 1996. Between 2005 and 2011, Iranian-supplied munitions were among the deadliest threats to U.S. forces during the Iraq War. During that conflict, Iran manufactured, supplied, and trained Iraqi militias to use Explosively Formed Penetrators, their most sophisticated and lethal roadside bombs designed to kill and maim U.S. service personnel.

These devices killed hundreds of U.S. troops, and thousands more were permanently wounded with amputations, burns, and traumatic brain injuries. And such EFP-related slaughter occurred not only in Iraq, but later in Afghanistan.

However, Iran’s involvement in killing Americans did not end with the Iraq War or Afghanistan. Its support for Hamas’s October 2023 massacre in Israel not only led to the deaths of over a thousand Israelis, but also killed 41 Americans.

And while there is no publicly confirmed proof that Iran planned or ordered that carnage, as Hamas’s long-term sponsor, providing them with funding, weapons, training, and technology, it almost certainly did.

As if motivations for Operation Epic Fury weren’t obvious enough, in retaliation for killing Qassem Soleimani, the key figure enabling the EFP campaign in Iraq, Iran plotted to assassinate U.S. officials. The Iranian hit list included former National Security Advisor John Bolton, past Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and, very likely, President Trump.

Yet, while a strong case can be made for Iran’s harm to Americans, its crimes against its own people are greater still.

During Iran’s nationwide protests in January, most estimates indicate that up to 36,000 freedom-seeking protesters were killed by live fire from military-grade weapons. And if that bloodshed wasn’t enough, 53,000 others were arrested, and many were reportedly tortured or, following sham trials, executed.

But the most epic motivation for Operation Epic Fury is none of the above. The most convincing rationale for overthrowing the current tyrannical regime in Iran is its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. That they were nearing that goal, threatening not only the Middle East but the entire world, is irrefutable.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, by mid-2025, Iran amassed roughly 972 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium. This stockpile far exceeded peaceful civilian levels of enhancement and was fast approaching weapons-grade material at 90 percent.

That amount of uranium, if further processed, could yield enough fissile material for about 10 nuclear bombs. And with no peaceful reason to enrich uranium beyond 60 percent, which was exactly what Iran was doing, that is the strongest evidence of their intent to create weapons-grade uranium in weeks, not years.

Even so, the Trump administration offered Iran many chances to avoid a military confrontation if only it ended support for regional militias and disbanded any further attempts to enrich its uranium stockpile. At every turn, they refused.

In fact, Iran’s Parliament defiantly issued a statement saying there could be “no limitation” on their nuclear development and that they had the right to enrich uranium “up to 93 percent,” well beyond any usable civilian levels of enhancement.

Furthermore, to sweeten the deal, the U.S. also agreed to provide Iran with a permanent supply of reactor-grade fuel for power plants if it agreed to stop all enrichment and eliminate its stockpile of uranium, nearing weapons-grade levels. Still, Iran objected, claiming their enrichment of uranium was their sovereign right and non-negotiable.

So, in giving the Iranians a clear-eyed off-ramp to avoid a military confrontation, all they had to do was stop funding militia groups intent on killing Israelis and Americans. All they had to do was accept our offer of a nearly limitless supply of peacefully enriched uranium to power their nation. And all they had to do was cease production of nuclear bombs.

But in the end, it was all too much for the state sponsors of terrorism to accept, and now America’s military is exposing their epic miscalculation for all to see. That is, except for progressives who remain blind to the forest of motivations to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions and equally sightless by the trees of Trump derangement, obscuring their view.

“Continental is increasing our capital budget, which will increase production,” Lawler said in a statement to Bloomberg.

With that reversal of a previously planned substantial cut in capital outlays, Continental becomes the first big shale player in the United States to announce its intention to focus on raising production in response to the current obvious price signal.

The move set off speculation of a looming return to the “Drill, Baby, Drill” shale boom times of the first Trump presidency. But investors and analysts should temper such expectations because times in the U.S. shale patch have changed over the last decade, and the strategic approaches of management teams inside the big shale upstream companies have shifted apace.

A price signal as strong as the rise of both the Brent and WTI indexes above $100 per barrel will inevitably draw a supply response. These shifts in shale fundamentals have come in response to several overarching drivers.

First is the maturity of America’s enormous shale formations themselves. When Donald Trump 45 took office in 2017, the various shale plays in states like Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania were in a relatively early stage of the natural life progression seen in every major oil play in history.

First comes a drilling boom during which drillers rush to stake out sizable lease positions and engage in rapid drilling programs to build up production and delineate the extent of the targeted formation(s).

Using Texas as an example, the state experienced a major initial drilling boom in first the Eagle Ford Shale and then the Permian Basin from 2009 through 2014, when Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries tanked the price of oil by flooding the market. That was an attempt by those other countries to regain market position, which they saw being reduced as the U.S. shale industry grew.

But the price bust was so intense that those OPEC countries found themselves struggling to fund their sizable social welfare states by 2016, when they combined with Russia, Mexico and other non-OPEC members to form the OPEC+ cartel.

Prices were recovering when Trump was sworn into office in January 2017, and his pro-drilling policies helped kick off a second drilling boom that slowly faded by mid-2019, as the various shale plays entered their next, more mature development phase of life.

The second overarching driver comes from investor pressure. During 2018 and 2019, major investors made clear to the upstream companies that they had taken on too much debt to fund their drilling frenzies and needed to refocus their strategies on maximizing investor returns.

Even before the COVID pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020, shale companies were already cutting drilling and exploration budgets in favor of funding stock buybacks and other strategies designed to return a bigger share of profits to their stockholders and lenders. Thus, a boomtime rig count that had approached 2000 active rigs embarked on a years-long decline that endured well into 2025.

The third big driver is the fact that, even with an active rig count that fell below 600, the industry has found itself able to not only sustain overall production levels but continue to regularly set new all-time highs through process improvements and major advancements in technology.

This trend led to a multi-year period of high profitability during times of modest drilling programs, supply chain troubles, and marginal commodity prices, a set of circumstances that has been all too rare throughout the industry’s history.

Combine that with the fact that the biggest shale companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Diamondback Energy have succeeded in turning shale into more of a repetitive manufacturing enterprise than the high-risk wildcatting operations of the past. There is little appetite in the industry for a return to another drilling boom.

To be sure, many of Continental’s shale competitors will no doubt also ramp up their own drilling programs in response to a price signal as strong as the current market. So, “drill, baby, drill” will make a comeback, but it will be a modest one.

David Bossie is the president of Citizens United and served as a senior adviser to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign. In 2016, Bossie served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President and deputy executive director for the Trump-Pence Transition Team.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

An accurate gauge of the overall health of the economy is critically important considering the federal government’s assumption of authority and control over the nation’s economic well-being. A false diagnosis will lend credence to bad policy choices.

Overall, the U.S. economy is not yet where it should be, though the doom talk today is overstated and politically motivated.

What is most damaging about the mismatch between today’s economic myth and reality is the false conclusions about economic policy its advocates send.

The midterm elections are the obvious context for the doomsaying about the economy. The wrong diagnosis could have long-term policy implications. The important question is what the current state of the economy indicates about economic principles and what policy course the United States should pursue in the future.

The two broad alternatives are more government intervention and economic management, or greater economic freedom. Let’s look at the numbers with that in mind.

Inflation has come down far from its mid-2022 peak of 9.1 percent (as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) to 2.4 percent. January’s headline inflation rate was the lowest since May of last year. Inflation of core consumer prices, which excludes volatile food and fuel costs, was 2.5 percent over the past 12 months, the lowest since March 2021. Reported inflation remains above the Fed’s goal of 2 percent per year.

Through January, the unemployment rate was middle-of-the-road, neither alarmingly high nor encouragingly low, though continuing a reversal of the pre-lockdown trend that has now lasted three years.

Critics are characterizing this normal but very slowly rising unemployment rate as a bad sign. “The U.S. labor market is facing another year of sluggish hiring and a further increase in the unemployment rate, a leading economist has warned,” Newsweek reported in January.

The widely predicted increase in unemployment has been scaring the public, as it should if it is true. Those prophecies proved wrong in January, however, as total nonfarm employment rose by 130,000 and the unemployment rate “changed little,” at 4.3 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Federal government employment decreased by 34,000, which means a transfer of workers to the productive private sector. That is a very good trend.

Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller called the job report “a surprise to the upside” which “suggests that the labor market may be turning a corner.”

Employment continued to rise in February, economist Robert Genetski reported in his newsletter: “ADP’s job data show employment continues to improve. The four weeks ending February 13 reported total employment increased by 51,000 jobs. This is up from an increase of 22,000 ADP jobs for the month of January.”

Unemployment remains nearly a percentage point above the recent low of 3.4 percent in early 2023, which was the lowest in 55 years. It rose to 4.1 percent in December 2024, about where it is now.

The important question is whether the current unemployment rate indicates weakness in the U.S. economy. The short and correct answer is that it does not.

Unemployment is a lagging indicator of economic conditions. It tends to be the last thing to rise when the government and central bank inflict economic damage, and it is usually among the last things to return to normal after those agents of misfortune relent on the policies that caused the trouble. The unemployment rate is a bad predictor of where the economy is headed.

The economic trends and reversals of the past five years make sense when we view unemployment as a lagging indicator of economic health. The federal deficit expansion in 2021 and 2022 created sharp inflation almost instantly. Higher business costs caused by inflation and the harsh tightening of regulation from 2021 to 2024 began pushing up the unemployment rate in 2023, BLS data show.

Unemployment has yet to move down much since then. Meanwhile, inflation has receded, private sector employment is rising, and GDP has been growing. Inflation-adjusted wages for U.S. private sector workers rose by almost $1,400 in 2025, after having fallen by $3,000 in the prior four years, which was compounded by the 21.5 percent rise in prices during that period. The last two numbers concisely identify the cause of the affordability crisis.

Now the “average American’s weekly paycheck buys ~2% more than it did 1 year ago when Trump was inaugurated, after falling ~4% during the Biden years,” wrote Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni.

Hence, the stagnation of the unemployment rate does not contradict the fact that the U.S. economy has improved in the past year. CNN Business Executive Editor David Goldman reported that the economy is doing well overall: “The US economy grew 2.2% in 2025, very much in line with the last three years of robust economic growth. The economy slowed down more than expected at the end of the year, but the longest-ever government shutdown stymied growth that should be made back this quarter.”

The Atlanta Fed now estimates first quarter 2026 economic growth will be a solid 3 percent. The U.S. economy is not yet as healthy as it should be, and affordability remains a problem for most Americans. Misguided government policies from 2021 to 2024 did an enormous amount of damage. Thus, a full recovery will take some time.

Meanwhile, public pressure for monetary and fiscal stimulus (greater government spending with higher tax rates and more debt) has intensified. Those measures would bring on the same consequences as the 2021-2022 stimulus created: inflation and stagnation.

So, which is it -- doom and gloom, or the approach of a glorious summer? Much depends on whether you recognize that the reported unemployment rate is not always a trustworthy economic indicator. The future of the nation’s economy depends on that choice.

Yet, that groupthink conclusion, based more on Trump Derangement Syndrome than on objective fact, is as laughable as it is desperate. And that is especially apparent when comparing the president’s economic achievements to his predecessor’s failures.

Most obviously, Biden’s misnamed $1.9 trillion so-called "American Rescue Plan" injected too much cash into an economy still reeling from lockdowns, resulting in a sharp rise in consumer prices.

Overheating the economy while supply chains were still broken supercharged inflation, rising from 1.4 percent on the day Biden took office to a forty-year high of 9.1 percent 18 months later. For context, prices rose faster than at any time since Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

The Biden administration claimed that the inflation was “transitory,” yet it produced an average monthly cost spike of over 5 percent, and an almost 22 percent cumulative price increase during Biden’s term. That “transitory” claim was so ludicrous that even former Obama officials criticized the scale of Biden’s spending, which subsequently created an additional affordability challenge.

Namely, to cool Biden’s overheated economy, the Federal Reserve Board predictably raised interest rates 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023. As a result, mortgage rates rose from 3 percent in 2021 to nearly 8 percent in 2023, making homeownership unaffordable for many first-time buyers.

To make matters worse, Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and stricter drilling regulations raised fuel prices by constraining supply. As expected, that misguided decision rippled through the economy, leading to “sticker shock” pricing for gasoline, utilities, groceries, and virtually everything else.

In the end, even though Biden apologists pointed to a nominal wage increase during his term, real wages lagged, creating affordability issues. As a result, polls consistently showed approval for Biden’s handling of the economy at little better than the 35th percentile.

But when objectively assessing Trump’s efforts to increase “kitchen table” affordability in his second term, the comparison to his progressive predecessor becomes even more striking.

Most notably, before Operation Epic Fury, inflation had fallen to 2.4 percent, and unemployment, while still too high, was down to 4.3 percent. Most grocery prices had decreased, and for the first time in four years, the cost for gasoline was often below $3.00 a gallon.

What’s more, following Trump’s negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, many drug prices are falling toward most-favored-nation levels. Boosting purchasing power, nominal wages have risen 4.3 percent, and the stock market has reached historic highs.

Yet even though the Fed has been reluctant to lower interest rates since Trump’s inauguration, borrowing terms for new car loans, mortgages, and credit card APRs remain lower than when Biden left the White House.

But affordable, not deplorable, evidence of Trump’s policies is even more obvious when highlighting his structural changes to the economy. For tax years 2025 through 2028, there is no longer a tax on tips up to $25,000, and for joint filers, there is no tax on overtime to that same amount. The tax rates across seven brackets have been reduced, and the standard deduction has increased.

Additionally, if purchasing a U.S.-assembled vehicle, there is now a loan interest deduction of up to $10,000 and an increased estate tax exemption of up to $15 million.

However, for many single-filing taxpayers 65 and older, the newly added Senior Bonus Deduction of $6,000, when combined with their existing deductions, provides a “tax shield” of over $24,000. Especially for low-income seniors, this sum can effectively zero out the federal tax bill for as many as 30 percent of all retirees, including any Social Security payments owed.

But that’s not all. Trump has increased the child tax credit and established a $1,000 tax-deferred, interest-bearing account for all children born between 2025 and 2028.

While all these affordability-boosting initiatives have occurred in the first year of Trump’s second term, there is still a long way to go to recover from the disaster of Biden’s presidency.

But one thing is certain. And that is, after objectively reviewing Trump’s economic accomplishments, anyone still believing them to be more deplorable than affordable should realize that millions of Americans will look no further than their improved standard of living to increasingly know better.

Consider the recent “No Kings” rallies. The Left claims President Donald Trump exhibits authoritarian tendencies – acting the king – when he applies the law as written, yet the Left accepted without a murmur that Joe Biden is ignoring the law.

We’re speaking of his rankly political student loan forgiveness and open border policies, of course. King Joe?

But Biden’s monarchical habits went further. It is no surprise the term “lawfare” gained currency during his blessedly single term as he led the Left up and down the political scales in attacking Donald Trump with spurious legal claims.

While the Left’s opposition to Trump is serious, their behaviors are anything but. Prancing around in costumes sporting signs calling for the Epstein files to be released while Biden sat on said files for four years is truly odd. Waving other signs sporting such vagaries as “science” and “democracy” are equally so.

Do the protestors stand for anything beyond opposing Trump? It’s hard to tell from their signage.

A telltale symptom of IRS sufferers is blaming others for their own failures. Take Illinois’ Democratic Gov. JB (Biscuits) Pritzker. When Jose Medina, a Venezuelan illegal, gunned down Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman recently, Pritzker blamed Trump.

Apprehended by border patrol and released by Biden in 2023, the illegal made his way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement-resistant sanctuary city Chicago. Pritzker implicitly acknowledges the illegal was bad news by insisting Gorman’s death was Trump’s fault because Trump failed “to go after the worst of the worst” in his deportations. Resist ICE and then blame Trump for Sheridan’s murder for not being vigorous in deporting illegals; classic IRS.

Or consider California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom blaming Trump for high gas prices. “Look at your cost at the pump the last few days. That was an act of the Trump Administration.”

Reality: Thanks largely to Newsom’s policies, gas prices in California were among the nation’s highest long before the war on Iran. Recently, the national average was $2.99 a gallon. California’s average was $4.65. Call it the Newsom surcharge. And when oil prices fall again, Californians’ will still be stuck with the Newsom surcharge.

California’s pain will worsen yet as Newsom drives out California refineries. It’s not complicated. Refineries gone, California now imports expensive gasoline, tanker after tanker. Even slick Gavin can’t explain how that’s green.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul recently showed modest resistance to IRS. Rich New Yorkers are fleeing the state, with more to follow, thanks to New York’s shoot-self-in-head tax policies. Hochul suggested going to “Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has eroded.”Good luck with that Kath.

Michelle Obama presented a wonderful example of IRS as she sought excuses for why Democrats lost elections running women for president. She opined the nation has “got a lot of growing up to do, and there’s still, sadly, a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman.”

Let’s see: 15 percent of the population is Black or Black in combination with some other race, yet irredeemably racist America (according to the Left) twice elected a Black man, Michelle’s husband, as president. Over half the population is female, yet according to Michelle, Americans won’t elect a woman. Go figure.

But Michelle’s preachy whining gained traction in the Left’s echo chamber as otherwise they’d collectively have to admit the losses by Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris had nothing to do with sexism. Trump had simply beaten weaker candidates.

To recall, Clinton lost because many Americans knew her well and wouldn’t trust her with a wooden nickel, and because she made some terrible late-game campaign decisions.

Harris lost because the Democratic Establishment – that would be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for example — let Biden hang on too long, thus dealing Harris a terrible hand. Harris just couldn’t toss enough word salads to recover.

Inconvenient Reality Syndrome should not be confused with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), though the two are complementary and often found cohabitating. IRS is an internally directed disorder while TDS is external. IRS appears when the patient blames others for the consequences of their own mistakes. TDS presents when the patient reacts with fury to anything and everything Trump does or says just because it’s Trump.

Historically, while some Democrats suffered IRS, many resisted it. The resisters’ ranks are thin today and getting thinner under constant pressure from the rest of the party’s TDS wing. Unfortunately, neither social distancing nor surgical masks protect against either IRS or TDS.

J.D. Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric toward NATO, calling the alliance a “paper tiger” and suggesting the U.S. might no longer need to defend NATO allies. Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle,” Hanson said the United States must seriously reconsider its approach to NATO, warning that the alliance’s current structure and European weaknesses demand a new strategy.

“I think we’re going to have to redefine or either redefine our relationship with NATO or start looking at individual NATO allies and bilateral relations. And I think it’s reflective of deeper, much deeper problems, whether it’s their open borders, their large, unassimilated Islamic populations, their coercion of free speech, their infertility and demography that’s about 1.3 replacement,” Hanson said.

“They don’t have fossil fuels. They don’t believe in it. And they have created this self-imposed, I guess you would call it a suicidal weakness.”

Hanson recounted a series of U.S. military involvements around the globe, including the Falklands, Chad, Kosovo, Libya, and Ukraine. In each case, he said, the U.S. shouldered logistical, operational, or strategic burdens while European partners avoided direct responsibility.

“I think we need to clarify what NATO is basically saying. In the case of Spain, particularly in France and Turkey, they were almost siding with Iran. But the other countries that didn’t let us, like the U.K. and Italy, as well as those three, they were saying, ‘Well, this wasn’t our war,’ but they don’t realize that we got involved in a lot of their unilateral events. Falklands was not our war,” Hanson said.

“We helped the British. They would not have been able to retake the Falklands without U.S. logistical and resupply. Chad wasn’t our war. The French wanted to go in there to their post-colonial interest and get out the Islamists. That wasn’t our war. Serbia and Kosovo. Kosovo was not a NATO member. It was attacked by Serbia. They told us it was on the doorstep of Europe.”

Hanson said the United States has repeatedly carried the burden of global conflicts while NATO allies hesitated or stepped aside.

“You had to come in and lead the coalition of NATO power. We did. Then they told us that we have to bomb Gaddafi and restore the momentum of the Arab Spring. That wasn’t our war. We came in there. That was a seven-month misadventure. And then they said Ukraine is your war, and we could see that we had interest in stopping Putin, but Ukraine was not a NATO,” Hanson added.

“So they engineer a lot of these interventions, and they do it both under the guise of NATO and singularly and unilaterally, like France and the U.K. But then they’re telling us it’s not your war, even though we know now that these missiles had a 2,500-mile range, and they had enough uranium, apparently, for 11 bombs. And they were an immediate and dire threat that we removed for them, and they can’t even repay that reciprocity.”

During the 1982 Falklands War, the United States provided missiles, aviation fuel, satellite communications, and logistical support to Britain after Argentina rejected peace efforts. Reagan administration officials also confirmed that Washington supplied the U.K. with advanced Sidewinder air‑to‑air missiles and sonar buoys to bolster British combat capabilities during the campaign.

After NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslav forces in 1999, the NATO‑led Kosovo Force — which included U.S. and allied troops — deployed to Kosovo to maintain security, ensure public safety, and support peace‑building efforts in the region.

The ongoing Kosovo Force mission continues to operate under NATO command with forces from multiple allies to help stabilize Kosovo following the humanitarian crisis and conflict in the late 1990s.

Nigerian military officials are identifying at least three attacks, according to a report from The Washington Post.

On April 4, 17 were killed in Benue state by armed men who assailed the Mbalom community.

Also on April 4, four police officers in Borno state were killed in a firefight with a group affiliated with the Islamic State.

Then on Easter Sunday, five people were murdered during a service in Kaduna state.

“Regrettably, the remains of five victims already killed by the terrorists were also recovered at the scene,” the Nigerian army said.

“The fleeing terrorists are believed to have sustained significant casualties, as evidenced by blood trails along their escape routes.”

Though the Islamic militants had taken hostages during the attack on April 5, 31 of them were freed after Nigerian troops responded, according to a report from the BBC.

The army said that a "fierce firefight" resulted in the militants leaving behind the bodies and the hostages.

While the government portrayed the response as prompt, some local media said that the militants were able to operate unrestricted for a long time, per the BBC.

The days preceding Easter saw similar violence in Nigeria.

On Palm Sunday, an overnight attack left at least 20 dead in Plateau state, with militants on bikes firing sporadically into the Christian community, according to a report from Fox News.

Trump administration officials have been raising concerns about the attacks targeting Nigerian Christians for months, as well as taking steps to ensure the Nigerian government is responding to the threats.

The attacks ahead of Easter also drew the attention of Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Africa Subcommittee.

“As Christians in Nigeria observe Holy Week and approach Easter Sunday, a time of profound spiritual reflection and celebration, I urge the Government of Nigeria to take immediate and concrete steps to ensure the safety and security of all Christian communities in the country," Smith wrote in a statement.

"This includes deploying adequate security forces and holding perpetrators to account."

The lawmaker added that "the continued failure to prevent and intercept these targeted attacks not only deepens human suffering, but also threatens the fabric of religious coexistence in the region."

Rolbert Joachim, who is 40 years old, allegedly attacked the woman in broad daylight outside a Fort Myers gas station, according to an April 7 report from Fox News.

The woman -- a mother of two teenage girls -- reportedly worked as a store clerk at the gas station.

Fox News reported that Joachim entered the United States in August 2022 and was allowed to remain in the country under Biden administration policies.

While a federal judge issued an order for his removal, he was given Temporary Protected Status.

The allowance expired in 2024.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin noted that a graphic video of the April 3 incident is circulating online.

"Joachim is seen hitting a vehicle with a hammer in the parking lot of the gas station," he described.

"The clerk comes out to confront him, he walks right at her, and with full strength, he bludgeons her in the head with the hammer," he added.

"She falls down unconscious and he crushes her head with the hammer 6 more times."

BREAKING: DHS confirms to @FoxNews that the suspect charged w/ murdering an innocent gas station clerk in Fort Meyers, FL by bludgeoning her to death with a hammer is a Haitian illegal alien who was caught & released at the border by the Biden admin in 2022. An immigration judge… pic.twitter.com/kzDAwg0aCl

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 7, 2026

Department of Homeland Security officials emphasized that the woman would still be alive if Joachim were never allowed into the country by the Biden administration.

"This illegal alien barbarically hit this woman in the head multiple times with a hammer," DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement to Fox News.

"This heinous murderer was RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration," she added.

"Not only did the Biden administration release him into the country, but they then gave him temporary protected status. Their reckless immigration policies cost this woman her life."

Gulf Coast News reported that the store clerk, a woman named Yasmin, originally hails from Bangladesh.

"We were not going home until we found him," Fort Myers Police Chief Jason Fields recounted of the incident.

"We had, I think, a cop on every single block in the last confirmed area that we saw him, and we used every resource, like I said, from our aviation support, K-9 support, to boots on the ground."

A city council bill would abolish the police’s “Criminal Group Database” that has documented alleged gang activity since 2013, the latest in a line of equivalent bills introduced over the past five years. Mamdani pivoted from supporting the database’s abolition in September to telling reporters on Monday that he is in “active” talks with the New York Police Department about reforming the tool.

Gang membership is at an all-time high in New York City, creating a link between gang activity and 65 percent of the city’s shootings, law enforcement officials told FOX5 in September. The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has also been active in the city since at least 2023 after former President Joe Biden’s border policies allowed a drastic increase in illegal Venezuelan immigrants.

The gang has been linked to a variety of crimes, such as sex trafficking of women and children, kidnapping, torture, and drug smuggling.

However, the far-left factions that helped elect Mamdani consider the Criminal Group Database racist and want to keep it from being a resource for immigration agents to track migrants. Banning it would remove a tool the NYPD said is crucial at a time of heightened danger.

The NYPD tied a local gang rivalry to an April 1 shooting that killed a seven-month-old baby in her stroller with a stray bullet in Brooklyn, local outlet PIX11 reported. The 21-year-old suspect and an accomplice allegedly arrived on a moped and shot at the girl’s father, instead hitting her in the head and grazing a two-year-old’s body.

“Eliminating the gang database removes a key intelligence tool used to track and connect organized criminal networks, which can reduce visibility into gang activity,” American Border Story Executive Director Nicole Kiprilov told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Scrapping the data would be a favor to transnational gangs such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13, according to Kiprilov, whose group investigates the effects of illegal immigration.

“This proposal would put New [Yorkers’] lives at risk,” a Department of Homeland Security representative told the DCNF. “We need cooperation with state and local law enforcement to remove criminals including violent gang members the Biden administration allowed to pour into our country.”

Mamdani’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. The socialist has left the database’s fate uncertain despite previously endorsing a ban.

“The vast dragnet has meant the inclusion of New Yorkers on the basis of whether they go out late, photos they put on social media, so much of the facts of life of being a young New Yorker,” he said in September, local outlet Vital City reported. “And yet it then becomes a mark of suspicion.”

‘Lawfully Obtained Information’

Police log someone in the gang database if they show “personal acknowledgement” of gang membership or if police have “a reasonable belief” that they belong to a gang, according to a February NYPD report. That belief must be based on “two independent and reliable sources, not including the nominating officer.”

The NYPD data are “not grounds for a stop, arrest, or any other enforcement action” and do not appear in someone’s arrest record, the report said. The data is “lawfully obtained information previously collected by NYPD personnel” that would otherwise be scattered throughout other NYPD databases, according to the report.

New York City’s Department of Investigation praised the NYPD in October for making “substantial improvements” to the database to respect civil liberties. Those included notifying parents when minors are added and clarifying what evidence is sufficient to show someone’s gang affiliation.

The city council’s bill currently has 19 lawmakers co-sponsoring out of 51. The 88 percent Democrat-controlled council functions much like the U.S. Congress, with the mayor having veto power. Legislators could override a Mamdani veto with a two-thirds vote to pass the ban.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch bragged about the database in a September interview, with no response from Mamdani at the time. “We know who the [gang members] are and are going after them,” she said, according to the New York Post.

Mamdani’s predecessor, Democrat Eric Adams, said banning the database is too “idealistic” in February 2025, the New York Post reported. Those calling it racist fail to recognize that most shooting victims in the city are black or Latino, he said. “Let’s keep them in mind,” he added.

Crime With No Borders

The DOJ filed several cases in New York City or Long Island targeting transnational criminal groups such as Tren de Aragua since President Donald Trump took office.

Trump promised to crack down on the Venezuelan gang during his reelection campaign after reports emerged of members violently taking over Colorado apartments. Biden’s immigration policies allowed an unknown number of Tren de Aragua associates to illegally enter the country, the DCNF previously reported.

The DOJ thanked the NYPD and other police departments in December for their assistance in investigating Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, an alleged Tren de Aragua leader currently on the run from authorities. The DOJ alleged in New York court that he partnered with Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro’s regime to flood American streets with drugs.

“Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country,” the DHS representative told the DCNF. The agency highlighted four ICE arrests in New York City of alleged Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and Latin Kings gangbangers in recent months.

Trump’s mass deportation efforts cannot save local communities from the left’s pro-illegal immigrant agenda if it wins in New York and expands, Kiprilov told the DCNF.

“When it comes to immigration specifically, Trump has done a lot, but ultimately states and counties/local jurisdictions must follow suit if we want to see real reform,” she said.

The police database debate is an example of how Mamdani’s election removed one of the only firm backstops to the city’s far left, Kiprilov said.

“Eric Adams actually pushed back on a lot of this extremism… and that’s ultimately one reason why the radical part of his party pushed him out,” Kiprilov told the DCNF.

Over the course of four days, Florida Highway Patrol and other agencies examined over 3,300 vehicles, according to a report from WKMG.

They observed many safety issues and tried to resolve them.

“The most dangerous things we see are cracked brakes and broken airlines," Major Tom Pikul of Florida Highway Patrol told the outlet.

"If there is an air release in a brake line, they have no brakes.”

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass meanwhile said that authorities came across serious identification issues.

“Some of the driver’s licenses that we would find wouldn’t even have a name on the CDL -- literally no name," he revealed.

The enforcement action resulted in dozens of arrests -- including 35 drivers on criminal charges and 42 on immigration violations.

Florida agencies put about 10 percent of the drivers they inspected out of service.

That level marked an uptick from past enforcement efforts.

The operation comes as state and federal authorities draw attention to the dangers of unqualified foreign truck drivers -- some of whom are illegal aliens, and some of whom have limited English proficiency or familiarity with traffic laws.

In one recent example, a video from Florida Highway Patrol showed a semitruck moving across lanes on Interstate 75 -- prompting several other drivers to call the police.

WOFL reported that the driver blew a 0.27 -- seven times the legal alcohol limit for commercial drivers -- during a breathalyzer test.

They even found alcohol in the front seat.

The driver lives in New York but originally comes from Uzbekistan, and body camera footage indicated that he had limited understanding of English.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently issued a final rule banning "unqualified foreign drivers from obtaining licenses to drive commercial trucks and buses."

“For far too long, America has allowed dangerous foreign drivers to abuse our truck licensing systems -- wreaking havoc on our roadways. This safety loophole ends today,” he said in a statement.

“Moving forward, unqualified foreign drivers will be unable to get a license to operate an 80,000-pound big rig. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are putting the safety of the driving public first. From enforcing English language standards to holding fraudulent carriers accountable, we will continue to attack this crisis on our roads head on.”

Iran announced the maritime chokepoint was open to vessels that met certain conditions, including paying a toll in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency.

Trump said that any ship paying the toll would be halted by the United States Navy.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,"  Trump posted on Truth Social.

"At some point, we will reach an ‘ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT’ basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, ‘There may be a mine out there somewhere,’ that nobody knows about but them,”“THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.

"I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

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